Guest Blogger, Doug Weaver, founder and CEO of Upstream Group gives us his perspective on Forrester’s ad spending projections - see report highlights, courtesy of KenRadio.

According to Doug:

Forrester’s numbers pass the smell test for me, although I find them still tethered to the old-fashioned concept of place. It’s all about “this or that channel will grow and we’ll put ads there.” I don’t see (or I missed) the discussion of the massive levels of audience selling that will be taking place through the exchanges and “ad operating systems.” This is where the web starts taking a big bite out of TV GRPs: when we can sell consumer audience segments in efficiently packaged bundles with great scale. I think this is the same story that was a the heart of the IBM report. See Doug’s opinion on the IBM Prediction here.

“Ad Operating Systems” is my term for the bit tech/data/portal conglomerates:
Google + DoubleClick
Yahoo + Right Media + Blue Lithium
Microsoft + aQuanative
AOL + Ad.com + Tacoda

The premise is that these are going to be huge transactional engines for the buying and selling of audiences on line. They disintermediate a lot of the low level hondling that too many people get paid way too much to do.

Forrester’s Interactive Spending Projections

No Slowing Down Interactive Marketing Spending (worthwhile free subscription to Ken Radio)
Interactive marketing spending in the US will more than triple over the next five years, reaching $61 billion by 2012, according to Forrester Research. The report expects that a maturing perspective about interactive channels coupled with technology advances will eventually lead to interactive technologies infusing all marketing efforts, and the interactive marketing organization will dissolve. The growth in interactive marketing spending represents a 27% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years. Interactive marketing — which currently comprises 8% of all ad spending — will grow to 18% of total ad budgets in five years.

• Search marketing will triple in five years. Mainstream marketers’ aggressive use of search marketing will grow the category at a CAGR of 26 percent to $25 billion by 2012 due to the increasing costs of paid search, additional spending on optimization tools and services, and international expansion.

• Display advertising will reach $14 billion by 2012. Display ads will be a key factor in the interactive marketing budget by having an essential supporting role for all interactive campaigns.

• Services and integration — not volume — will drive email marketing growth. Spending will focus on improving email relevancy with analytics and data management, and will grow to more than $4 billion by 2012.

• Online video ads will significantly increase. Growing consumer adoption of online video will result in a dramatic 72% increase in online video ad spending to $7.1 billion by 2012. More customer-centric online video applications will increase the medium’s appeal for consumers and marketers.

• Social media will drive emerging channels to $10 billion by 2012. Mainstream adoption will boost spending in emerging channels such as social media, mobile, game marketing, widgets, podcasts, and RSS. Spending on social media alone will grow to $6.9 billion as marketers understand how to use and measure this channel.

• Mobile marketing will grow to $2.8 billion. As consumers become increasingly tied to personal computing handsets, they’ll want to extend their mobile utility to accommodate transactions. This transition will drive mobile marketing to grow to $2.8 billion by 2012.

These changes will not only affect the budget structure of marketing organizations, but it will also give interactive marketing professionals a more legitimate seat at the marketing table. In fact, with interactive marketing gaining executive visibility as much for its popularity with young consumers as for its measurability and cost effectiveness, seeing a class of marketers emerging who will involve themselves with a few high-profile interactive experiments in order to catapult themselves into the CMO seat.