The digital ad market is expected to see a spending boom — up 82 percent in four years — as advertisers try to keep up with consumers’ changing lifestyles.
Not surprisingly, that means less money to more traditional print and broadcast media, such as magazines, newspapers and TV, sure to affect traditional media stocks heavy in those areas.
PQ Media, a Connecticut research firm, said companies expect to spend $160.8 billion by 2012 on an assortment of communications and media vehicles, according to USA Today.
Digital advertising includes cell phones, video games, online videos, store-based TV screens, sponsored events, and TV and movie product placements.
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"Americans are spending more time out of the home, working late hours, communicating via wireless devices, shopping in malls and getting stuck in traffic," PQ Media CEO Patrick Quinn told the newspaper.
"There has to be some change in strategies to reach these people."
Quinn said the so-called new media vehicles will comprise 27 percent of all ad and marketing spending in 2012, an increase of 16 percent from 2008.
The largest gains by 2012 include non-traditional media such as online searches, event sponsorships, e-direct marketing, online video, and "rich” media — such as video newscasts.
Advertising on online searches has become increasingly popular because companies like the leads that are generated when readers click a sponsor’s site. Advertising spending on online searches is estimated to more than double to $26.1 billion.
Beneficiaries will be new media giants like Google and Yahoo and even smaller firms, such as ClipBlast and Citysearch.
Many shopping sites also make the experience interactive for consumers, allowing them, for example, to see how a blouse or dress may look on them. Those sites will see spending increase to $12.2 billion, up 389 percent.
Companies will also spend about 72 percent more —$33 billion — sponsoring theater, music, and sports events. Last year sponsors spent $2 billion alone on pro hockey, baseball, basketball, and football.
E-mails and those annoying pop-up ads also remain popular, especially ones that tout great deals or discounts for products or services. Marketers will spend $22.1 billion there, an increase of 121 percent.
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