Digital marketing budgets to increase in 2010

14:45 5th February 2010

Companies will devote more funds to digital marketing in 2010, a new report has found.

Econsultancy and ExactTarget's global survey found that companies would increase their budgets for digital marketing by an average of 17 per cent.

Linus Gregoriadis, Econsultancy’s research director said investment would occur across many types of digital marketing campaign but that some areas would dominate.

He said: "Social media marketing is the area where companies are most likely to be spending more money in 2010, but areas such as search engine marketing and email will remain buoyant."

Morgan Stewart, director of research and strategy at ExactTarget, added that the swing to digital marketing from offline campaigns was being driven by a need to manage the reputations of brands more closely.

The research found that pay-per-click was thought to be the most successful strand of a digital marketing strategy.

Social media will continue to be an important area for digital marketing professionals to concentrate on with 70 per cent of respondents saying they intended to increase their budgets for sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

A report by the Internet Advertising Bureau agreed with this finding, stating that social media platforms would be the focus for brand advertisements in the future.