It’s perhaps no big surprise, but new Forrester research shows that online marketers are increasing their reliance on vehicles they know work:  in particular, over 90% are clinging to email and search.  Meanwhile, spending on emerging channels such as online video advertising and mobile is all but stagnant.  The research surveyed 204 interactive marketing professionals, and was briefly summarized by Christopher Hosford for BtoB’s Daily News Alert.

On the other hand, one relatively new area – social media – is doing quite well:  64% of respondents are already investing in social apps such as podcasts, widgets, user-generated content and blogs, and another 22% say they’ll do so within 12 months.

Call it “the silent click”, if you will.  Most B2B marketers think of Web advertising only in terms of lead generation, and so may be short-changing vehicles that don’t fit well into that ROI model.  Now, along comes a study done by comScore last winter – in the teeth of the current economic doldrums – and released by the Online Publishers Association last week;  it shows that…

• buyers exposed to display ads spent 55% more time on the advertiser’s Web site than average; and
• those exposed to the ads on business-news Web sites spent 26% more on e-commerce than unexposed consumers.

Thanks to Sean Callahan for finding and summarizing the study in his BtoB Magazine piece.  Oh, and it did include some B2B names like Oracle, not just B2C as you might first suspect.  Hopefully this will embolden marketers to think beyond their click conversion rate… or, in the words of OPA’s President Pam Horan, “Potentially a better way to look at the role of display advertising is in building brands.”