Marketing Forecast from Ad-ology

The recently released State of Marketing report from the CMO Council contains great statistics for anyone looking to understand the direction of the marketing department in larger companies. A key insight from the report addresses the long-established business relationship between ad agencies and their clients. Specifically, several business changes are converging to threaten this relationship.

Business owners responding to Datran Media’s 2010 Annual Marketing & Media Survey told a familiar story. Over half of the respondents said that revenue suffered in 2009. On the plus side, nearly 75% are looking for revenue to trend up in 2010. To drive the growth, business owners will use a mix of media formats and they’ll be measuring their online efforts to see what is working.

Have consumers reached a limit to the amount of media they can consume in one day? Or did the recession have an impact on consumer media engagement in 2009? These are questions worth pondering when considering the recently published findings of the Yankee Group.

Earlier this month, E-marketer predicted that the behavioral targeting ad industry will reach a spending level of $4.4 billion by 2012. To a large extent, marketers are counting on being target to track Web user behavior anonymously. This is frequently carried out through the use of browser cookies, Web beacons or flash cookies.

Many companies choose to sign on with affiliate marketers to increase their online traffic and sales. As a result, affiliate marketing has grown into a sizeable industry. These businesses link to online retailers and promote the retailers’ offerings. In return, they receive a fee for each order that originates from their site.

Search engine marketing continues its reign as the king of online media. Despite a slowdown through most of 2009, the search market improved at the end of the year. The recent Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization survey results show that spending on search should grow by 14% in 2010. This growth would bring total spending to $16.6 billion.