Analysts from eMarketer weigh in on how the next year in online marketing, e-commerce, social networking and more will unfold. Here’s a quick overview.

Online ad spending

Analyst David Hallerman predicts online video ad spending will run counter to overall economic developments, and rise by 45 percent in 2009 to reach $850 million. Even though advertisers are increasingly budget conscious, they agree that the best way to woo online audiences to open their shrinking wallets is through “messages that reach their hearts and minds – hence more video.”

Search marketing

Hallerman also says that search marketing spending will grow by 14.9 percent in 2009, to $12.3 billion. He calls search marketing “recession-resistant” as it is highly measurable and advertisers will increasingly look “secure and effective methods to combat fear in an economic meltdown.”

Total ad spend

Finally, Hallerman comments that total U.S. Internet ad spending will increase to $25.7 billion in 2009, an 8.9 percent growth rate. While that will be the lowest year-over-year increase for online advertising ever, it will still be more than nearly all other media.

Demographics: multicultural ads ascend

Lisa E. Phillips says that multicultural marketing will be on the upswing in 2009 with more African-Americans and Hispanics going online. More language and culture specific messages will be required.

Retail e-commerce: big declines

Jeffrey Grau has gloomy news: online retail sales (excluding travel) will grow by only 4 percent in 2009, although he notes that online sales growth was already on a downward slope as the number of online buyers approaches saturation. Most retail e-commerce sales growth in the future will come from increased spending by consumers who have long been online buyers, he says.

E-commerce for social networking

EMarketer’s Debra Aho Williamson believes that e-commerce will be a growing revenue stream for social networking sites. She expects both MySpace and Facebook will enhance their self-serve advertising systems to sell real world goods and services.

But at the same time, she also predicts tough sailing for smaller and niche social networks, many of which may need to shut down or be acquired by larger players. Marketers that have built their own social network platforms will need to migrate them to existing services.

Since Facebook is already a de facto business networking site (because of the number of businesspeople who use it), Williamson says the company will develop ad programs aimed at B2B companies and that will directly affect existing business-focused networks like LinkedIn.

Twitter may have turned down Facebook’s all-stock offering in late 2008, but it will still end up being acquired, Williamson predicts. And the company that buys it will use the Twitter infrastructure to offer targeted marketing and analytics to advertisers.

Traditional media will continue to hurt

Carol Krol weighs in on newspaper advertising which, not surprisingly, will continue to decline in the new year more than any other medium. Industry-wide cutbacks will continue, and there will be more consolidation. “The industry was limping before the recession; expect more newspaper companies to become casualties,” she writes. Also look for more newspapers to reduce their publishing frequency similar to the Christian Science Monitor, The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, she adds.

As for TV ad spending, it will decline 4.2 percent to $66.9 billion in 2009. And YouTube will start to carry full-length television programs supported by ads, in keeping with the company’s Q4 2008 announcement. Other online streamers will follow suit.