Indiantelevision.com Team

(26 October 2007 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Interactive marketing spending in the US will more than triple over the next five years to reach $61 billion by 2012, according to a new Forrester Research Inc. report released at the Forrester Consumer Forum 2007 in Chicago.

Forrester expects that a maturing perspective about interactive channels coupled with technology advances will eventually lead to interactive technologies infusing all marketing efforts, and the interactive marketing organization will dissolve.

"As firms continue to make customer centricity a higher priority, they will recognize that maintaining separate marketing teams to manage different sets of channels that all target the same customers makes no sense," said Forrester Research principal analyst Shar VanBoskirk.

"Over the next five years, we see interactive technologies gradually infiltrating all media — including such traditional paragons as television, billboards, and direct mail — and the concept of a separate interactive marketing organization will disappear," he said.

The growth in interactive marketing spending represents a 27 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years. Interactive marketing — which currently comprises 8 per cent of all ad spending — will grow to 18 per cent of total ad budgets in five years.

The Forrester forecast is based in part on a survey of 344 interactive marketing professionals and their budget decisions affecting display ads, search, email marketing, online video, and emerging media (social, mobile, and advergaming).