Forrester Research has taken a look into the future of interactive marketing, and it seems to be coming of age. Twenty-one is the predicted percentage of marketing budgets that will be spent on interactive marketing outlets by 2014, the research indicates. In their US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 to 2014, they summed it up this way:

Interactive marketing will near $55 billion and represent 21% of all marketing spend in 2014 as marketers shift dollars away from traditional media and toward search marketing, display advertising, email marketing, social media, and mobile marketing. This 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!

That budget money has to be coming from somewhere, so the next question to marketers was:

“Which of the following traditional marketing budgets will you decrease in order to fund increased interactive marketing?”

Here are the top five budgets that will be cut, and the percentage of marketers who gave that answer. (They were allowed to choose more than one answer.):

Direct Mail                          40%

Newspapers                      35%

Magazines                          28%

Television                           12%

Yellow Pages                      11%

Are you cutting budgets in favor of more interactive marketing? Let us hear.