We can thank Ben Franklin for penning that truism.  However, if Benny were alive today, he might have modified it to read “The only things certain in life are death and taxes and increased interactive marketing budgets.”

Now, we’re NOT a market research firm or think tank – nor do we want to be one.  We’ll gladly leave that to Forrester, Frost & Sullivan and the like.  They’ve put in the hours to forecast global ad spending figures and trends.  Feel free to buy their reports or just peruse some headlines in Ad Age for a few precise stats.

However, we ARE an interactive development agency which has played exclusively in this sand box since before the turn of the century.  And we’ve witnessed first hand the transformational shift away from traditional channels to social and interactive media, which has completely changed the landscape for advertisers, agencies, publishers, and most importantly, consumers.  While we admire the early adopters who continue to press the boundaries of interactive design and technology, we note that even the sleepiest of giants are finally beginning to wake up and smell the Return On Investment.

The fact is saying your brand has a digital strategy and buying some media on staple sites such as Yahoo, AOL and the like isn’t good enough anymore.  I mean, who does anything other than check mail on AOL?  Nope, a media buy alone won’t separate you apart from the pack.  It takes much more in terms of planning and dollars now to be effective.  The companies who are asking the right questions and forcing their clients to think about new and developing channels are the ones who are poised for the most growth and success because it’s that type of thinking that will grab the budgets from hungry advertisers.

The train’s long left the station and ‘old world’ agencies and related thinking are unfortunately still stuck on the platform.