The rising importance of digital media, marketing, and commerce is elevating the importance of the chief marketing officer as strategist, innovator, and buyer of advisory services and technology.

As adoption of digital media and devices surges, companies are investing billions of dollars in digital marketing.

Marketing spending has followed customers to digital channels
 
Growing adoption of digital devices and media is forcing businesses to update their marketing strategies. US adults now spend more time each day with digital media than watching conventional television.¹ By 2014, there will be more mobile devices in the world than people.²

These trends have intensified the battle for people's fragmented attention as businesses try to reach, engage, sell to, and serve customers across offline and digital channels. This battle is driving strong growth in spending on digital marketing.
 
Digital marketing is the set of systems and processes that businesses use to interact with customers over digital channels such as the web or mobile devices, and to measure, manage, and optimize those interactions.

Digital marketing activities include creative design; content creation and management; marketing automation; customer and campaign analytics; e-commerce; and web, search, email, social, and mobile marketing.
 
The funds committed by big consumer goods companies to digital marketing suggest the importance of digital channels today.

For example, Unilever increased its digital advertising spending by 40 percent last year, allocating about 35 percent of its US budget to digital.^3,4 P&G spends a third of its US advertising budget on digital media.⁵ A significant share of this spending is on paid media, and some spending is on services related to marketing and advertising activities and subscription-based technology services.

Overall, digital marketing spending now represents more than 2 percent of company revenues and is expected to increase by 9 percent this year, while IT spending, at 3 percent of revenues, is flat. ⁶
 
Full report

End notes

1.Cotton Delo, "U.S. adults now spending more time on digital devices than watching TV: Digital devices now get more than five hours per day, according to eMarketer," AdAge, August 1, 2013, http://adage.com/article/digital/americans-spend-time-digital-devices-tv/243414/, accessed November 1, 2013.back
2."The story of two techs: Smartphone & tablet adoption & usage," visual.ly, May 22, 2013,  http://visual.ly/story-two-techs-smartphone-tablet-adoption-usage, accessed November 1, 2013.back
3.Jack Neff, "Unilever ad spending hits new heights, but agency fees on downward trend: Good news for marketer not necessarily good news for agencies," AdvertisingAge, January 23, 2013, http://adage.com/article/news/unilever-ad-spending-hits-heights/239348/, accessed November 1, 2013.back
4. Ibid.back
5."P&G shifts marketing dollars to online, mobile: World's largest advertiser says as much as 35% of ad budget going to digital media," The Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412 7887323681904578641993173406444.html, accessed November 4, 2013.back
6.Key findings from U.S. Digital Marketing Spending Survey, 2013 (Gartner)back

About The Authors

David Schatsky is a senior manager with Deloitte LLP. His focus is analyzing emerging business and technology trends.

Vikram Mahidhar is a director in Deloitte LLP's innovation group. He focuses on identifying emerging business ideas and driving development and commercialization of emerging products and services.