Analytics in 2009 - Quick Thought

I prepared this statement for an analyst looking to gauge the health of the analytics space in 2009 and how it will impact vendors --- from software to services.

"We have seen marketing budgets slightly cut for 2009, however, we are seeing online grow by way of reducing offline. To our benefit, we are seeing a renewed interest in marketers focusing on analytics and optimization efforts as they are pressured to justify their existing budgets. We've been competing with other web analytics platforms and winning with large enterprise clients by leveraging the savings from Google Analytics which gives companies more resources for people to perform analysis and testing. So for 2009 we predict a much greater emphasis on making "analytics actionable" and less focus on investing in deep product features that may not get used and diminsh the overall return on their analytics investment. Testing most likely will gain momentum as marketers work to squeze every last dollar out of their budget. I believe the areas of online advertising that will face downtimes is social media, ad networks and other areas that are not providing a direct / measureable return."