Annual Content Marketing Industry Spending Survey

Research by McMurry's digital business team shows newer tactics and tools continue to impact content marketing spending. Companies spent $40.1 billion on content marketing in 2010, based on a recent industry report published by ContentWise, the leading source of news, information and research on the content marketing industry published by McMurry. Of an average company’s overall marketing, advertising and communications budget, 29 percent was dedicated to content marketing in 2010.

As a result of the evolving content marketing landscape and the use of varied media to deliver content, the study explored content marketing beyond the traditional “custom publishing” forms of print and digital publications and e-mail newsletters for the second straight year.

Spending on evolving forms of content marketing such as Web content, videos, podcasts, events, mobile content and white papers was pegged at about $3.6 billion, or about 9 percent of the total spend on content marketing.

Spending on more traditional forms of content marketing remain steady. Approximately $24 billion went toward printed magazines and newsletters, while digital publications and e-mail newsletters spending rose to $12.5 billion from $12.1 billion.

The content marketing research was conducted through a random sample of companies across all industries and produced a degree of accuracy of +/- 6 percentage points at a 90 percent confidence level. Among the responding companies were AARP, Allstate Insurance, ASPCA, Boston Scientific, GE Healthcare, Hoosier Energy, MassMutual, Nationwide, TCF National Bank and University of North Carolina.

Katie Haney manages all internal communications efforts for McMurry, including daily news and the company's intranet site. She also manages the company's public relations efforts and oversees support teams across all three offices. She has a deep interest and experience in social media and company culture.