New research from Econsultancy and Clash-Media, the online customer acquisition specialist, shows that 53 percent of marketing budgets for US companies have increased in the past year, in the face of slow economic conditions. This extra budget is being used to fund high-return Online Lead Generation campaigns, with Email Marketing the top area of spend, with 75 percent of organizations using it.

According to the research, Paid Search has become less popular within online marketing, with 12 percent fewer companies using it compared to last year – largely because ROI is harder to achieve and quantify. The US leads the way in innovation: 49 percent of companies use social media marketing, compared to 32 percent in the UK and 29 percent in Europe.

"It's great news for the industry that the majority of marketers have increased budgets and can see the benefits of Online Lead Generation," commented Matthew Conlin, Sales Director of Clash-Media US. "Advertisers need more visibility of their campaign and more relevant data in order to achieve higher quality results overall. It is important that campaigns are personalized to potential customers, and US marketers lead the world with their integration of social media marketing into the media mix. This now combines with other methods, such as Online Lead Generation and online display advertising, to achieve higher campaign ROI.

"The findings back up our experience, that the type of Online Lead Generation and customer acquisition offered by Clash-Media is a perfect fit for advertisers at a time when performance-based marketing is one of the fastest growing requirements," continued Matthew Conlin. "Our transparent approach to identifying interested consumers maintains advertisers' brand integrity through quality content-based placement, and ensures maximum ROI by only charging when a consumer engages with the brand."

The growth in online marketing channels
Some of the respondents to the survey provided insight into why they are moving even more budget towards online channels:

"Better comparability between online and offline Cost per Lead has enabled us to shift budgets from off- to online."

"Offline is too expensive and doesn't get the same speed of responses as online. Online gives faster calls to action and results too."

"It has become more important to measure the return on investment, considering typical advertising/marketing budget cuts."

Clash-Media delivers a global and fully transparent Online Lead Generation service that connects advertisers with consumers. It is a full-circle data solution that collects and manages customer data for its clients, producing qualified leads in line with advertisers' exact specifications to deliver an optimized return on investment. Clash-Media provides its clients with a centralized managed service to support any lead generation campaign. It has established a wide global network of partners that enables it to operate in any market around the world, and its quality control processes and technologies maintain the highest standard of lead generation.

About Econsultancy:
Econsultancy is an independent community-based publisher, focused on best practice digital marketing and e-commerce. It helps its members build their internal capabilities via a combination of research reports and how-to guides, training and development, face-to-face conferences, forums and professional networking.

For the last 10 years, its resources have helped members learn, make better decisions, build business cases, find the best suppliers, accelerate their careers and lead the way in best practices and innovation.

Additional information is available at http://econsultancy.com

About Clash-Media:
Clash-Media is a global leader in performance-based data marketing that has pioneered new techniques in Proactive Online Lead Generation. The company's powerful lead generation network connects advertisers to consumers producing qualified leads, with detailed profiles on their interests, in line with advertisers' exact specifications.

Clash-Media launched in 2006 and now delivers around five million fully opted-in sales leads every month for customers around the globe, including Samsung, Toyota and Cheapflights.

Clash-Media currently has offices in London, New York, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Munich and Paris. It plans to expand into Spain, Italy and Asia-Pacific.

Additional information is available at www.clash-media.com

Duncan Burford
IBA - PR for Clash-Media
Tel: +44 (0) 1780 721 433
Email: dburford@iba-international.com

Christopher Petix
Clash-Media US
Tel: 212-946-8525
Email: cpetix@clash-media.com