Forecast: B2B online budgets will rise in '08

Business to Business advertisers will likely increase their online ad budgets for 2008. According to a recent survey from BtoB online, events and direct advertising categories will see the largest increases.

by Kristina Knight

More than 60% of B2Bers plan to increase these ad categories. About 30% of marketers plan to leave their budgets at the same level and 10% will likely decrease their ad budgets.

For most (62%) of B2B marketers customer acquisition is the primary goal while 19% want to increase brand awareness and 11% want to increase customer retention.

For those marketers who plan to increase their online spending website development is where most plan to spend their budgets (74%). Email development is the second most likely to increase category (70%) and search engine marketing (64%) is the third area on which marketers will focus. Social networking will not be ignored as marketers look ahead to 2008. Nearly 40% plan to increase online video, 39% will increase webcasting opportunities and 26% will invest in some sort of social media.

Also interesting is that many B2B advertisers plan to increase their print budgets. About 27% said they would increase print budgets in 2008 compared with 33% who said the same thing in 2007.

Researchers studied 213 B2B advertisers during the last week in November and the first week in December to obtain the results for the "2008 Marketing Priorities and Plans" survey.