Businesses in the UK look set to increase their marketing spend on digital platforms this year, according to a new survey from research company, Econsultancy.

The survey, which sought the views of 500 senior executives across businesses and their agencies, identified an intention to increase digital marketing spend in 2012 among 68% of company representatives; and among 75% of agency respondents on behalf of their clients.

The survey further found that of those businesses planning to boost their digital marketing budget, 79% intended to increase this spend by as much as 10%.

69% of businesses, meanwhile, said they anticipated increasing their outlay on marketing using social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook; whilst 57% revealed that they planned to up their investment in mobile marketing initiatives, including apps, quick response (QR) codes, and m-commerce.

Interestingly, 55% of respondents claimed a ‘good’ or ‘very good’ understanding of how to analyse the effectiveness of digital campaigns; against a total of 44% who expressed the same confidence in measuring the success of campaigns across traditional platforms.

This latter data could, it is argued, be taken as evidence of the greater transparency of digital marketing devices such as pay per click (PPC) over measurement techniques used for traditional media.

The survey also revealed that the predicted growth in digital spend would be very much at the expense of that on more traditional media: just 45% of business executives anticipated increasing marketing spend across the board this year; whilst only 16% said they would be increasing their spend on non-internet related marketing.