• by Karl Greenberg , December 11, 2009

Interactive marketing will approach $55 billion and will 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 a new identity for Yahoo.

The report, which surveyed 204 marketing executives across various industries, found that the recession is accelerating the shift to interactive, mobile media, and social media. The executives also said that marketing is becoming more powerful in corporations, given its connection to consumers.

As marketing dollars move to new media, print will suffer. A full 60% of respondents said they are boosting the interactive budget by shifting money from other media. Forty-nine percent 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 be cut.

In terms of rankings, 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 devote to specific media, based on the North American Technographics Benchmark Survey. In a comparison between 2007 and 2009, advertisers this year spent 31% of the budget on TV -- about what they spent in 2007. The time consumers spend watching TV has dipped from 37% in 2007 to 35% now.

In the same period, time that 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, with just $716 million this year compared to the total $25 billion total spend, Forrester predicts that both social and mobile will have the biggest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) -- 34% and 27%, respectively -- through 2014.

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: Yahoo will be sold. Forrester predicts that a less consumer-friendly buyer such as tech company Lenovo will woo Yahoo.