I am happy to announce the latest release of Forrester's five-year digital marketing forecast, a data-rich tool for budgeting, benchmarking, and identifying key trends to watch as you set your 2015 strategic plan. What you need to know:

  • US Digital marketing spend will top $100 billion in five years. Just think about how big that is. By 2019 in the United States, digital will be almost twice as large as it is now. It will be about $13 billion more than television advertising, and it will count for 35% of all advertising spend.
  • Growth is healthy but not runaway. We expect a 12% CAGR between now and 2019, which is a healthy slope, especially when considering numbers of this magnitude. But it is worth noting that this growth isn't skyrocketing. Marketers 15 year look-back window allows them the experience and performance data they need to know when to invest in digital, but also when not to overspend.
  • Mobile marketing represents 66% of growth. This year, we included mobile as a deployment option (akin to desktop) for search, display, or social ad impressions. So you won't see it as its own line item in the forecast. But rest assured, increased use of mobile by consumers, growing familiarity with mobile advertising by marketers, improvements to ad formats, metrics and buying practices, and increasing mobile ad costs will make mobile count for $46 billion of our $100 billion bogie by 2019.
  • Contextual marketing will steal some media dollars. Within five years, we will also see marketers shifting some of their digital media budget — the principal investment counted in this forecast — to fund customer-obsessed contextual experiences. This means that media dollars — either traditional or digital — are now going toward technology investments in stores or within marketing organizations, employee education, customer experience improvement, or data purchases.

How does this growth align with your own? What factors are you weighing as you determine your budget for next year? Which digital channels do you prioritize?

Check AdAge for some additional insights on our numbers.