Companies will spend more money advertising online in the future, according to the Head of Research at the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). Mark Blayney Stuart was speaking on the future of digital marketing, at an event organised and hosted by the Isle of Man CIM on Wednesday (February 9). He said: "More people are investing in online marketing now. The online spend will overtake offline spend in the next three years as increasingly there will be a shift in budgets to online marketing rather than offline." Around 65 marketers from a number of companies across the Island attended the event, which was sponsored by isleofman.com and held at the Sefton Hotel. Mark explained that it was important that companies used the internet to target their potential audiences. He said: "Our experience is that people don't actually go 'surfing' the internet. We all stick mainly to seven or eight sites that we are familiar with and trust. We want to know we will be familiar with the site when we get there. "The key to the future to inhabit the spaces that people are already in. If you can reach people where they are already you have a much better chance of success and driving people towards you." A number of examples of successful online marketing were highlighted including Sainsbury's who used Yahoo Answers to communicate with potential customers and the Cadbury's gorilla advert which was copied by numerous people who made their own versions online. One of the main benefits of marketing online is the fact that the response can be measured, however, Mark said it was important that companies did not become hung up on this. He explained: "One of the problems with the fact that you can measure absolutely everything means you start to get mesmerized by the measurements and you can actually take it too far. "We've seen plenty of companies who would have no problem in running a print, radio or TV campaign where they can't really measure very accurately what the perceptions of that are. "It's almost as if when companies put a campaign onto the internet, because you can measure it – it's 'we've got to'. Then if the measurement doesn't seem to meet their expectations the campaign can get dropped - well I think that there are lots of other really valid reasons for staying on the internet." CIM Isle of Man Chair Cathy Cowin said: “We are delighted at how successful this event has been. Online Marketing is growing rapidly and getting your business out there is important. We have received some fantastic feedback and are pleased to have been able to facilitate this event and offer a CIM marketing expert’s insight, to a cross-section of local businesses, into a medium which is leading the greatest organisations to success.” ENDS