Interactive Marketing (mobile, search, & online) to reach $25.6 billion

Within the next year interactive marketing efforts will increase by 11%, to reach $25.6 billion. The report, from Forrester Research, predicts that by 2014 the interactive spend will top $50 billion.

This, despite flat predictions for 2009 because of the US and global economy. Forrester researchers combined search, email and social marketing efforts as well as mobile marketing efforts. How can they be certain about the increases? According to a blog post by a Forrester Research analyst marketers are pulling ad dollars from channels which are not performing well or which do not have accurate metrics and pushing ad dollars into more trusted areas.

Although most forecasts have hedged at smaller growth rates, the Forrester reports notes that in one recent survey more than half of online marketers reported plans to increase interactive budgets by taking money from areas which are not performing to par. One of those areas is direct mail, which could lose as much as 40% of its market share. Newspaper advertising is another likely loser; this should not be surprising with news that many papers are cutting off print circulation, merger with their biggest competitors or are going with an online-only format.

In addition, newspaper circulation is sinking. With circulation dropping, it is no wonder marketers are dropping off of newspaper radar.

The biggest gainers, and the reasons interactive advertising is gaining ground, are expected to be social marketing and mobile marketing platforms. With consumers flocking to hubs such as Facebook and Twitter each day, marketers are quickly becoming familiar with ways to create an on-going, social program to build loyalty with social consumers. The same can be said with mobile. Although consumers are still lagging, new devices like the iPhone will bring more and more consumers to the mobile web.

Mobile SMS Updates About Swine Flu

New age technology is helping ease the fear surrounding Swine Flu and helping spread the latest news, in real-time, to interested and worrisome citizens. Instead of waiting for the local news every night, one service aims to provide news updates via SMS at no charge- other than standard carrier SMS rates that is.

Provided by CellPhones.org, the service aims to send out information 1-3 times daily with urgent information- such as new outbreak info, messages from health authorities and travel warnings as they develop. News issued by the CDC or WHO will also be sent in real-time. To sign up, simply text “PIGFLU” to 41411.

The benefits of the latest technology come in all forms, but in this case, SMS has proved its relevance once again. In cases like this, people want to know what’s going on in real-time, and SMS-based services like the one provided by CellPhones.org is a perfect example.