The Chief Marketing Officer Council’s just released an annual forecast that predicts in 2008, many marketers will be changing strategies to focus more on online activity. As a result, they found, will also see many marketers changing their advertising agencies.

Online marketing activity, such as email campaigns and search engine marketing, will attract a larger part of the budget this year as marketers continue to focus on online strategies. “A lot of research we’ve done shows that web is the top priority in terms of brand, customer engagement, insight, and it is becoming a bigger area of focus,” said Dave Murray, executive vice president of the CMO Council.

There is resistance by the agencies to adopt fundamental online strategies, leading Deloitte Consulting, the sponsors of the survey to say: “The CMOs tell us that the agencies are not delivering.”.

I’m reminded of the ‘ostrich head in the sand’ metaphor that I learned years ago. Some of these agencies are sticking their head in the sand, hoping that online marketing is just a fad that will go away if they ignore it long enough. With online advertising overtaking TV advertising in markets like the U.K., these agencies need to wake up before they find they are one of the 45% of advertising agencies that are going to be dropped by their clients in 2008, according to this survey.

Have a great (online) marketing year!