Interactive, emerging and social media continue to play a major role in marketing next year, according to a new forecast from Interpublic’s Magna Global division.
The research shows traditional media is still important — but continues to slow — and emerging mediums, including online gaming, social networking, mobile and online video, will grow by more than 30 percent in 2009. In addition, search marketing remains the largest emerging media category, as more brands explore e-commerce and customized delivery of content based on user action.
And while overall spending and growth is down, the report is an encouraging sign for marketers looking to use emerging media to target and enable engagement opportunities for niche consumer groups online.
The Washington Post summed up the report in succinct bullets for us:
- Search will grow by 24 percent to $13.8 billion. Search will remain the dominant “emerging” media category, and its growth will slow only slightly compared to this year’s forecast of a 26.5 percent gain over 2007.
- Online video will experience the fastest growth within the emerging media category, seeing gains of 45 percent to $805 million next year. Still, compared to past years, that area is starting to slow, as in 2008, online video is expected to climb 54.2 percent; in 2007, online video gained 67.4 percent.
- Social media will grow by 37.4 percent to $1.474 billion. But from 2006 to 2007, the social media space grew 141.7 percent, and then is expected to increase 60.8 percent by the end of 2008.
- Gaming will grow by 27.4 percent to $296 million, mostly from online use, compared to 35.6 percent anticipated growth for 2008 and 51.9 percent in 2007.
- Despite the coming conversion to digital TV next February and targeting through cable by Canoe Ventures, “advanced TV” will still have trouble attracting major marketers, Magna contends. Still, it should grow by 13.7 percent to $183 million by next year.
View the report slides here (pdf).