From humble beginnings, interactive marketing -- including search, pay-per-click, contextual, affiliates and more traditional online advertising -- is today worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
It is estimated by E-Consultancy that search marketing alone will bring in UK revenues of nearly 拢600m in 2005, and online advertising is currently enjoying seemingly unstoppable growth.
However, despite this success, many of the online marketing disciplines remain unregulated by any industry body, and as such, open to abuse.
If this situation continues, unscrupulous online marketers could damage the reputation of a highly useful new marketing channel -- to the extent that online could become the new "junk mail" in the eyes of consumers.
Direct marketing is however perfectly placed to take ownership over this growing and vibrant medium and establish regulation.
First and most importantly, the two industries are fundamentally alike.
The foundation of direct marketing is data: the discipline allows marketers to track responses to their campaigns to a high degree and thus gain insight into respondents.
The very same is true of digital -- prospects can be tracked online and a large amount of insight into their behaviour can be gained from data they impart, whether through online forms, web tracking, or purchases.
Search marketing activity, for example, generates millions of fulfilment packs, phone responses and CRM programmes, setting aside the wealth of current consumer data.
In a time when accurate consumer information is becoming increasingly difficult to source through traditional means, does online marketing not then offer a solution?
No other marketing discipline is quite so well placed to understand digital marketing's capabilities or see its potential come to fruition as direct.
Secondly, the success of many well-known and well-established online brands is firmly rooted in offline direct marketing techniques.
Would Amazon and Figleaves have become the power brands they are today without fulfilment and delivery lying at the core of their digital offering, just as they do offline for finance, insurance and travel sectors?
By using direct marketing techniques online, successful internet operators have been able to respond to their customers' needs and desires as never before.
Most importantly, direct marketing campaigns are already being run that successfully merge the two disciplines and combine their strengths.
Many campaigns which begin in offline activity, such as DRTV and direct mail, are now carrying specific website addresses as the direct response medium, and from then on consumer reaction to marketing activity can be tracked as never before.
You would be hard pushed to find a direct marketing agency these days which did not either operate its own in-house digital department, or work closely with an independent online specialist.
Digital and direct are perfect partners -- it should be obvious.
And yet, the Direct Marketing Association has limited itself to councils for iTV and email marketing and has like other marketing bodies ignored search, affiliates, and other digital techniques -- the largest part of online marketing budgets.
This failure to seize the high ground over the digital issue and take up online regulation continues to present a substantial missed opportunity for the DMA.
If only it would decide on an overt position towards online marketing, any lingering reticence regarding the online medium could be dealt with, and steps could begin to be taken towards tackling unscrupulous practices in online marketing which are now beginning to take root.
Digital marketing has evolved and continues to develop at such a pace that it may soon be too late for regulation.
Direct marketing and digital are such obvious bedfellows -- the DMA really should be leading the charge towards greater understanding and implementation of such a valuable direct marketing tool.
Equi=Media is a member of the DMA, Institute of Direct Marketing and the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
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