Marketing Forecast from Ad-ology

Last October, the analysts at Magna Global adjusted their 2012 ad market projection down from 4.8% to 2.9%. Since then, the economy has improved slightly. As a result, the media unit at IPG Mediabrands once again revised its prediction, up, and the year-over-year revenue growth is now expected to be 3.7%.

At last month’s Consumer Electronics Show, manufacturers rolled out their latest line of Smart TVs. Analysts believe that unit sales of Internet-ready TVs will approach the sales of traditional TVs within 4 years. But marketers may be much slower to shift some of their ad budgets to this format.

Retailers are as mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. For years, consumers have been going into bricks and mortar stores to size up the look and feel of a product and then head home to buy it online. Retailers call this trend ‘showrooming’ and they’re rapidly developing new strategies to better compete with online marketers.

The good news is that 4 in 10 BtoB operators plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2012. This figure is slightly lower than it was last year. However, the real story can be found in the shift that these businesses are making to employ less expensive marketing channels while they increase the effectiveness of their spending.

Will 2012 be a better year for media sales? Yet another survey shows increasing optimism on the part of ad agencies. But not all media formats may grow as expected.

Marketers have been tempted to cut back their ad budgets as the recession drags on. This has been especially true in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) sector where private labels brands are aggressively rolling out and capturing market share. But cutting ad budgets is exactly the wrong move according to the latest research.