Hiring the Internet

It shouldn’t come as a shock that more and more marketers are taking their advertising efforts online. We’ve chronicled this shift fairly frequently, like in this post on the increase in spending in social network marketing.

But just because marketers are increasing their budgets for interactive advertising, that doesn’t mean they’re making money.

The good news is at least they think they will. And positive thinking has power, people!

According to the “2009 Promo Interactive Marketing Survey” from PROMO magazine, more than one-third of marketers believe that interactive marketing ROI will be more profitable than traditional marketing – such as TV, radio and outdoor - this year.

Take a look at this bar graph from eMarketer, which details the results of the survey:

As eMarketer points out, while 29% of the marketers surveyed were unsure if digital marketing ROI would turn a profit or not, only 7% believed that digital marketing would be less profitable than previous years.

Tell us something we don’t know, right?

It seems to us that if online sales are up, as we report in this post, it’s only natural to assume that interactive ROI will increase too. Unless, of course, some marketers are made of money and are pumping more cash into online efforts than they expect to recapture.

Maybe those are the folks who make up the 22% who indicated they would funnel money from traditional media to the digital space this year. But for that faction, the issue then becomes how to measure the ROI since a lot of newer platforms aren’t yet measurable.

Which begs an important question: How do they know it’s working?

The answer is simple: They don’t.

Perhaps they should give Nesquik a call. They seem to have a handle on things.

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