• by Karl Greenberg , December 11, 2009

Interactive marketing will approach $55 billion and represent 21% of all marketing spend in 2014, benefiting from search, online display, email marketing, social media and mobile marketing, per Forrester's Interactive Marketing Forecast.

The firm predicts that the shift will result in overall lower marketing budgets, the end of old-media agencies, and interestingly, a new identity for Yahoo.

The firm, which surveyed 204 marketing executives across industries, found that the recession is accelerating the shift to interactive, mobile media, and social media.

The executives also said that marketing is gaining more power in corporations because of its connection to consumers. The firm says 40% of marketers said that marketing is the strategic leader of their organization.

By far, print will suffer the cuts. A full 60% of respondents to Forrester's survey said they are boosting their interactive budget by shifting money from other media. Forty percent of those who are increasing interactive media said they will take money from direct mail; 35% said newspaper media will get the axe to feed interactive; 28% said magazines. By contrast, only 12% said TV will get cut.

When the marketers were asked to parse media by which would see its effectiveness increase, stay the same or decrease, marketers were most optimistic about social media, online video, search engine optimization, mobile, paid placement in social media, email and paid search, in descending order. Near the bottom were outdoor, telemarketing, radio and newspapers.

The new Forrester study also compares ad spend to the time consumers spend on specific media based on the North American Technographics Benchmark Survey. In a comparison of those parameters between 2007 and 2009, advertisers this year spent 31% of budget on TV, about what they spent 2007. The time consumers spend watching TV has dipped from 37% in 2007 to 35% now.

In the same period, the time consumers spent online has grown from 29% to 34% between those two years. But advertisers only spend 12% of their budget on Internet marketing, up from 8% two years ago. The firm predicts that by 2014, spend will have increased to 21% -- with search marketing making up the lion's share, followed by display.

Although social media is only a sliver of spend for marketers -- at just $716 million this year compared to the total $25 billion total spend -- Forrester predicts both social and mobile will have the biggest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) -- 34% and 27%, respectively -- through 2014.

"Complexity around metrics, marketer, content, and carrier relationships plus limited consumer mobile data use stifles mainstream marketing adoption," wrote the study's lead author, Shar VanBoskirk. "Markets will prefer more established tools to mobile marketing until mid-2011 when we anticipate post-recession adoption will escalate."

As for Yahoo, Forrester sees consumers digesting media across devices, which will benefit Microsoft and Google. Yahoo will decline because of disjointed customer experience across channels. Result: someone will buy Yahoo.

"We are keeping our fingers crossed for Apple. We'd love to see an Apple/Yahoo partnership give Google a run for its money but we're betting Apple's proprietary culture will keep it from pulling the trigger," said VanBoskirk. The firm predicts that a less consumer-friendly buyer such as tech company Lenovo will woo Yahoo.