More Marketers Embracing Social Media: Forrester

Read more commentary from Ken Magill

While e-mail, search and display advertising have reached near universal adoption among marketers, social media—podcasts, user-generated content and social networks—have made serious gains in the last year, according to a recent study by Forrester Research.

Ninety five percent of marketers surveyed by Forrester use e-mail marketing and another 4% plan to do so by the end of year, according to the study authored by analyst Shar VanBoskirk. Also, 94% of marketers either are using or plan to adopt search and online display advertising by the end of 2008, according to the survey.

And while the numbers for e-mail search and display advertising are similar to those of a year ago, the adoption of social media has pretty much doubled, according to the study.

Forty eight percent of the marketers surveyed said they use podcasts now compared to 25% last year; 40% will support user-generated content by the end of 2008 compared to 22% in 2007, and 41% have adopted social networks in 2008 compared to 20% in 2007, according to the study.

And as always, measuring the effectiveness of the various marketing channels is considered a top challenge.

Fifty one percent of marketers using online display and search advertising said they struggle with measuring their returns, while 58% using online video wrestle with gauging its worth, according to the study.