Growth in spend on social media forecast

A study by Forrester Research found that while half of marketers said they would boost budgets, social media spend remains very small in proportion to other media -- 75% of respondents who knew their budgets said they were planning to spend $100,000 or less over the next 12 months.

Areas that they highlighted for investment included social networks, blogs and user-generated content.

However, the majority of social media budgets are not predetermined -- 45% said they were generated on an "as needed" basis throughout the year; and 23% said that their funds were scraped together from wherever they could find them.

The research also highlighted that money being allocated to social media comes at the expense of other budgets -- the biggest proportion of respondents (35%) stated that social media spend came out of the corporate marketing coffers; while 24% of the sample said that it came from the advertising budget.

A surprisingly high 15% of marketers did not know where money for social media budgets came from.

Forrester surveyed 145 global interactive marketers at business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies employing 250-plus staff.