Forrester Predicts Interactive Ad Spending Increasing to Nearly $55 Billion

Forrester recently released their ‘US Interactive marketing Forecast, 2009 to 2014’ and it has some very interesting numbers. Most notably is that Interactive Marketing will represent 21% of all marketing spend in 2014 up from 12% in 2009. This will represent nearly $55 Billion in market spend. They also predict that traditional media will take a hit as more and more money is spent online.

Interactive Marketing Vs. Traditional Media

Sure this is good news for companies like us but it is very good news for you as well. Traditional marketing has been hard to measure, yes you see an increase or decrease in sales based on marketing campaigns but you can’t effectively track it. You just have to believe that your print or TV campaigns actually brought people to your business and that it isn’t some sort of fluke. Of course it generally isn’t but if you’re like me you want to see some sort of tangible number or graph that makes me feel good about advertising. With Online Advertising you can. This is because online is simply the transfering of data from one point to another. These bits of data are kind of like a delivery truck. This data can carry various things like tracking code and this is the code that lets us track many many things. The beauty of tracking data is that it can tell us, among others, which page on a site was the most viewed, which site or search engine users came from before getting to your site and most importantly what keywords they used to search for your site.

Learn more about tracking your site using Web Analytics Reporting

Forrester’s prediction that spending on Interactive will increase is something we’ve all known about but we haven’t had the numbers to back it up. And there are some impressive numbers;

Search Marketing spend will double from $15 Billion 2009 to $31 Billion in 2014.
Mobile Marketing increases from $391 Million to $1.2 Billion
Social Media more than quadruples from $716 Million to $3.1 Billion or 34% of all Interactive Spend

Social Media Marketing – Where Do We Go From Here?

Impressive numbers but what does this mean to you? Well, if Forrester is right Online will continue to eat away at traditional media with Social Media Marketing taking up the biggest piece of the puzzle and if you aren’t already embracing that medium you need to. Social Media, although a huge buzz term right now, is being embraced by more and more demographics and if your company isn’t in front of them in some form your competitors are.

How Do I Get Started Social Media?

That’s a great question, obviously we can help you, but if you want to get started on your own ask people around you what they are doing. We’ve all heard of Facebook and Twitter, to name a few, so take the plunge and join them. My 64 year old father is on Facebook, it is no longer that ‘college site’ you have no use for. Twitter reached it’s tipping point before Oprah picked up on it so it must serve a purpose, right?

This IS something that needs to be embraced by you and your company. Age is no longer a difference. This isn’t the same as some young kid kicking your butt in a video game. You don’t have to be young to do it, you just need passion and that is something you need to be successful in any medium or facet in your life. If you don’t have passion then it won’t work for you but realize this: Someone else will take your piece of the pie if you are not watching and Social Media will be a BIG piece of the pie.