SHANGHAI -- (BUSINESS WIRE) --

As online penetration approaches 50 percent (670 million Internet users) in China, the world’s most populous market, Digital is at the top of marketing leaders’ agenda. Launched at the Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq:FORR)’s China Summit for Marketing Leaders in Shanghai, the survey finds that 63 percent of marketers consider achieving a positive ROI as their top digital marketing challenge.

“As marketers become increasingly responsible for revenue generation, they care even more about the effectiveness of their digital marketing spending,” advises Forrester’s Senior Analyst Xiaofeng Wang in the research. “Digital agencies can play a more important role by providing counsel on strategy and measurement that will help marketers achieve business outcomes.”

Marketing leaders in China expressed a need for more support from their digital agency in areas such as a customer experience strategy, measurement and analytics. 40 percent of the marketers surveyed indicate that they were handling at least eight different digital marketing duties, including social and mobile marketing, customer relationship management (CRM) and eCommerce. Social marketing, digital strategy, and content are the three initiatives that marketers consider their top priorities in 2015.

Seventy-eight percent of marketers surveyed indicate an increase in their digital marketing budget in 2015 vs. 2014 and Forrester forecasts that online advertising spending in China will double again to reach $38.1 billion by 2017, despite the rapid increase over the past two years.

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