CardMarketing 2.0

Is this the year that the Great Migration begins — the mass migration of marketing and ad budgets around the world from offline media to on? A quick round-up of some of the latest forecasts and stats from around the world suggest it just might be.

In December, ZenithOptimedia, the global media service agency, forecast that online advertising in 2007 is set to grow seven times faster than offline advertising — by 28.2% compared to 3.9%. With internet penetration in the most mature markets, it claims, already at 70%, this move to monetize eyeballs is only logical. Pertinently, Zenith also reckons this will be the year that online adspend will overtake outdoor adspend — although we will apparently have to wait until 2009 before it overtakes radio.

A similar noise is being made by global marketing software provider, Alterian. According to Alterian’s fourth transatlantic survey of 500+ direct marketers, marketing services providers and agencies, a massive 85% of respondents expect their online direct marketing expenditures to increase this year, with 81% planning to increase their spending on email marketing. This spending projection is the largest expected increase since the survey began in 2003 and another sign that budgets, implacably, are moving online.

Elsewhere, in mid January, online marketing research company, eMarketer, issued its European Online Advertising Report, which claimed that companies in western Europe will spend $7.5 billion on online advertising in 2007, up 25% on 2006. The report predicts that, this year, over 136 million people will be online in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy alone, of which 45% will be online every day.

Unsurprisingly, eMarketer says that money spent online will hit offline advertising outlets hard. Lisa Phillips, senior eMarketer analyst and author of the report, claims that the online media environment “is literally gobbling up ad dollars from other media”.

In an equally bullish statement, Susquehanna Financial Group claimed this month that “internet usage rates will grow 10%+ annually as more compelling content is married with advance search solutions, personalization and globalization”.

Interestingly, Susquehanna also revealed that internet users remain “significantly under-monetized in relation to traditional media”. In the US, it claims, advertisers spent approximately $286.4 billion in 2006, or roughly $957 per US citizen across all media. However, this is roughly thirteen times more than the figure spent on internet users. “To this end, we estimate internet advertising represented just 6% of total domestic ad spending in 2006, far short of the internet’s approximate 25% share of overall media consumption.”

This is surely a shortfall that must be marketed and monetized. Let the Great Migration begin.