Earlier this month, the IAB, ANA, AAAA, and Booz Allen Hamilton released some results of a study called “Marketing & Media Ecosystem 2010.” According to the study of marketers, agencies, and media company senior executives, over 90% of them plan to increase spending on digital marketing initiatives.

However, the report goes on to say that “[w]hile all senior marketing executives recognize the importance of creating a digitally focused culture, fewer than one in four agree their organizations are currently digitally savvy, and they identify significant barriers to change including: insufficient metrics (62%), lack of organization support (51%) and lack of experience in the new media (59%).”

So three of the barriers to digital marketing are insufficient metrics, lack of organization support, and lack of experience. Which all mean fear.

Insufficient metrics – Fear of not being able to CYA. Metrics are what marketing people use to prove to the finance and sales departments that marketing is valuable. This also demonstrates a lack of understanding of how online marketing works. If there’s one thing online marketing generates, it’s data.

Lack of organization support – Fear of change? This is a study of senior marketing executives – what part of the organization that they lead doesn’t support them? The only thing I can figure is that was an option on the survey and they inserted that, meaning they’re comfortable doing what they’re doing.

Lack of experience – Fear of the unknown. There’s a reason that people assume that big business types are all Republicans – corporate America is conservative. Big business got big doing one thing, and they’re very reluctant to change. Change will come first from the smaller, younger, hungrier companies who don’t have “senior marketing executives,” but rather ad budgets that are too small for TV anyway and need to get results right away.*

So 90% of marketing execs “plan to” increase spending on digital marketing, but a lot of them won’t because of their fears. The hungrier companies and those in the most competitive markets will actually move more quickly to digital marketing. The rest will be along later after their fears have been put to rest by the pioneers.

* There are exceptions to this broad statement. Auto makers do a lot of online advertising. So do some CPG companies like P&G. However, for both of these examples, online is dwarfed by TV and other traditional media.

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