Traditional Advertising versus Social Media
Forrester Research report estimates interactive marketing spending from 2009 – 2014 is on the rise. By 2014, the online marketing budget will represent 21% of all marketing spend. This also indicates that traditional advertising is declining, but assumes overall budgets will as well.
As you’ll note by this graph from Forrester, the majority of budget is earmarked for Search Marketing, but I would think there could be changes to budgets being allocated to social and mobile in the future.
Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk alerts marketing and media professionals with a dire warning, “The cannibalization of traditional media will bring about a decline in overall advertising budgets, death to obsolete agencies, a publisher awakening, and a new identity for Yahoo!”
An interesting point to note – when it comes to search engine marketing and search engine optimization, the latter is the larger market. About 20% might click on PPC ads, but the campaign is created almost instantly. With SEO the time to rank can be from 3 months to a year or two, depending on the competitiveness of the industry and a dozen other considerations. When asked which is the best direction moving forward, I’ve always said both. Your SEM campaign can drive business until your SEO begins to work for you.
Does Social Media replace advertising? No, its just another channel to work with. Just like TV never replaced radio, and the Internet never replaced television.
