The trend is already underway, as more marketers this year are taking money from traditional marketing budgets and using it in interactive advertising, as opposed to supporting interactive efforts with new funding, as was the case in years past, according to the Forrester Research report “US Interactive Marketing Forecast 2009 to 2014,” by Shar VanBoskirk.

The above chart represents the interactive marketing spend forecast through year 2014. 

• Search Marketing will continue to lead the lion’s share of interactive spend growing from an estimated $15 Billion in 2009 to in excess of $31 Billion in 2014.
• Display Advertising comes in second behind search and will increase from just under $8 Billion in 2009 to $17 Billion in 2014.
• Email Marketing will double from $1.2 Billion, and
• Social Media and Mobile Marketing which are realizing the fastest growth percentage wise will total in excess of $4 Billion in 2014.

You can read the full article on internetnews.com.

Google Takes the Battle to Microsoft
Google is taking the battle to Microsoft’s backyard with the recent announcement of Google Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system designed to initially run on netbooks and later be available to the open source community.

The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.  You can read the complete article here at googleblog.blogspot.com.

The Growing Power of Mommy Bloggers
Last week, one of my associates and rising public relations star, Kim Jaimeson gave our internal agency staff a presentation on the power of Mommy Bloggers.  I came across this article and it sparked me to mention some startling statistics related to the power and growth in this emerging buying group.

Mommies are flocking to social networks, according to new research from BabyCenter LLC, which runs several parenting Web and community sites.

The number of moms using social media regularly has grown from 11% in 2006 to 63% today, an increase of 462% in three years, the company said.

Social media are not equal in online mommies’ eyes, however. Most say they use mass-reach networks such as Facebook for socializing and entertainment, but turn to specialized content sites for information and counsel from fellow parents.  You can read the full article by visiting Promo Magazine.

Improving Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Clicks and Conversions
I do a fair amount of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and trying to keep up with white hat methods and practices is like sometimes drinking water from a firehose.  Google, Yahoo and MSN Bing consistently update and change their algorithms therefore keeping search engine optimization rankings as a dynamic practice.

Recently, I came across this webinar on Marketing Expirements, which I think does an outstanding job of explaining white hat tips and strategy to effectively building sites and landing pages optimized for search engines and better conversions.

Humorous Web 2.0 Viral Video
One of my distinguished colleagues, Mark Newsome, Sr. Vice President of Client Services shared this web site story musical video with myself and others today.  While I self proclaim to honing absolutely zero ability when it comes to musical talent, I thought this was a very funny and viral video and wanted to share it with you and my vastly growing audience of 40,000 unique visitors (actually 4 visitors according to Google Analytics a few moments ago), but hey, an Interactive Marketing Blogger has to start somewhere right?  Can only go up from here.