14% of companies spend ad money online

According to the late 2003 survey of 359 tech vendors conducted by InsightExpress, the increases to online advertising and online lead generation were slight, but encouraging. Respondents indicated that 14% of their budgets were allocated for online advertising, and 26% for online sales lead generation. These figures each represent a 1% increase over 2002, but are 2% behind the projections for 2004.

More than half (54%) of the respondents indicated that they would increase their marketing budgets in 2004, while 31% expected their allocations to remain flat. Only 7% revealed that a decrease would be imminent. Nearly one-quarter (24%) projected that they would allocate over $500,000 for their marketing activities and sales lead generation in 2004, while the majority (39%) planned on spending $50,000 to $100,000. Webcasts and online newsletter advertising were the sales lead generation methods that were expected to show the most growth in 2004 over the previous year. While more than half (55%) of the survey participants indicated that they used Webcasts in 2003, nearly three-quarters (73%) were expected to use the medium in 2004.