In a survey conducted by the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, marketers from product and service companies in both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) industries and enterprises anticipate a continued increase in digital ad spending through this year.

The expected growth in digital ad spending in the B2B sector is expected to be 9.9%, while B2C spending will increase to 11.1%. This marks an increase from August forecasts, which expected growth to top out at slightly over four percent. Spending for traditional media marketing will continue to decline during this time in all areas.

As reported in eMarketer, “Social media continues to be an area of focus for marketers as they continue driving up spending on the digital format.” The article goes on to say that “…social marketing spending accounted for an average of about 6.6% of marketer budgets…was expected to rise to 9.1%, and in the next five years, marketers expected social to account for 15.8% of spending.”

More than a third of the marketers stated that they had a strong understanding of the value of social media marketing, and had quantifiable results on their ROI in this area now and expect to be able to produce the same in the future.

References:

eMarketer. “B2Cs, B2Bs See Digital, Social Ad Spend Rising, As Traditional Stalls – Social’s share of budgets will rise.” Oct. 3, 2013.