Marketing Forecast from Ad-ology

Marketers continue to turn to new channels to promote their products and services. One rapidly growing channel in the past 2 decades has been entertainment marketing spending. This group broadly includes event sponsorships and marketing and paid product placement. The channel generated $24.63 billion in 2009, a figure which represented a small drop (1.3%) from the previous year. However, PQ Media analysts expect growth to resume in 2010.

Ad-ology Research recently updated their Industry Marketing Insights report for Bars and Nightclubs. The following are the predicted Top 3 Opportunities/Challenges from the report for this industry for the upcoming 12 months:

Consumer interest in mobile apps remains huge. Nielsenwire analysts note that the sales of smart phones are projected to overtake the sales of traditional mobile phones in the near future. As they do, consumers will continue to download apps. This trend presents an opportunity for app developers.

Few people will argue that consumers are spending more time than ever engaged with media. The total media time for consumers, on average, has reached 3,532 hours, annually. And as the hours have increased, the types of media used by many consumers have changed. But Veronis Suhler Stevenson analysts believe many companies in the media industry have not kept up with the pace of these changes.

As consumers spend more time online and interacting with their friends through social networks, a related industry is growing quickly and generating revenue for savvy marketers. It’s all about virtual goods. When consumers are playing online games or posting updates to their personal pages, they present a ready market. Operators such as Zynga are selling real-world pre-paid game cards that players can use to customize their online places. And then there’s always the option to buy an e-birthday greeting or e-flowers for friends. Analysts note that this industry was worth $1.6 billion in 2009.

With more consumers of all ages turning to smart phones for information, communication and entertainment, video game console manufacturers and retailers have good reason to wonder where their market is headed. For nearly a decade, the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 have commanded impressive market share. And then the Wii came along and captured huge interest from the younger boy and young women demographic groups.