OHIO – A new study shows that shopper marketing has outpaced even Internet advertising, AdAge.com reports. Retailers and package-goods marketers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on in-store marketing to reach consumers at the point of sale. The study found that marketers have doubled their spending during the past three years.

However, marketers do not quite know how to define, measure or administer shopper marketing, the report found. In-store marketing jumped from 3 percent of the overall marketing budgets in 2004 to 6 percent this year. Interviewed package-goods manufacturers predict that by 2010, that number will be 8 percent.

The compound annual growth rate for in-store point-of-purchase spending is 21 percent, which is more than Internet advertising, which is 15 percent a year.

Retailers’ shopper-marketing spending is increasing even faster at 26 percent annually. AdAge.com speculates that with the growing importance of in-store marketing, the industry’s balance of power could tilt “even more toward retailers, which, besides being the distribution channel, also ultimately own the fastest-growing advertising medium for their suppliers too.”