The state of interactive marketing in seven countries: Interactive marketing comes of age

This paper reports an empirical study of the state of interactive marketing (IM) in five large developed markets (United States, Japan, Germany, UK, and France) and two key emerging markets (China and Brazil). Expenditure on IM is growing fast, already accounting for over 8% of total marketing spent. It is significantly higher in services versus products and B2B versus B2C markets but varies surprisingly little (as a percentage of marketing expenditure) between countries. It is growing especially fast in the United Kingdom, United States, and China, and more slowly in France and Japan. The fastest-growing IM activities are permission e-mail and online promotions/incentives. Other IM activities include Web advertising and sponsorship, marketing Web sites and extranets, and new media such as wireless and iDTV. Qualitative data suggest that the rapid growth of IM, mainly at the expense of traditional media advertising, seems likely to continue for the foreseeable future.