The economy is putting ever-increasing demands on marketers to make every dollar count and demonstrate positive ROI.

According to the “2009 Promo Interactive Marketing Survey” from PROMO magazine, the demand to perform is driving marketers online. More than one-third of marketers surveyed believed that interactive marketing ROI would be more profitable than traditional marketing—such as TV, radio and outdoor—this year.

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While 29% of the marketers surveyed were not sure whether digital marketing ROI would be more profitable or not, only 7% of them believed that digital marketing would be less profitable.

So it comes as little surprise that 22% of the marketers indicated they would shift dollars from traditional media into the digital space.

The problem with shifting funds to digital initiatives is that consumers are gravitating to areas where the metrics are still pretty shaky, such as blogging, social networking, video and word-of-mouth.

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Paradoxically, under much pressure and with little choice, the drive for performance seems to be pushing marketers into spaces where they have few means to measure ROI—and prove performance.

Marketers are moving dollars to emerging media—even though, among the marketers polled, 38% didn’t know or didn’t measure their online ROI.