Interactive and e-commerce sales rose 12.1 percent to $31.4 billion last year, according to a new report announced by the Direct Marketing Association.
Online sales this year are expected to cross $36 billion and grow 20.9 percent each year to reach $81.1 billion in 2006, the DMA's “Economic Impact: U.S. Direct & Interactive Marketing Today” said.
The financial services category, comprising securities and commodity brokers as well as depository institutions, along with the airline industry were in the vanguard of interactive and e-commerce sales and of ad spending growth in the past five years in both the consumer and business-to-business categories.
These two industries in the next five years are expected to post double-digit growth in the same categories, the report said.
