The company also pointed to a slight benefit from the ad recovery that began tentatively in the second half of ‘09.  Razorfish’s average client upped their media spend by 4 percent last year, versus the 13 percent cut in budgets in 2008.

For the most part, Razorfish’s Outlook found a great deal of stability, despite the tremendous upheaval in the general marketplace. In terms of other trends Razorfish spotted last year, investment in portals declined for the second year in a row, while there was some growth in ad networks. But ad networks would have grown more had it not been for ad exchanges, which saw real gains for first time since appearing on the online ad scene five years ago. Both ad nets and exchanges are also taking money away from portals, Lockhorn noted.

“The definition of a portal is changing,” he said. “It’s going through an evolution of its own. We’ve counted the big four—AOL (NYSE: AOL), Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), MSN as well as Google (NSDQ: GOOG)—as portals for long time. We may have to include Facebook in that group, since it’s getting so broad in the kind of content that appears in members’ news feeds. You have to ask, is that social net becoming a portal? Especially as the portals themselves adopt more community features. We’ll be considering that for next year’s report.”

Other findings from the Razorfish Outlook included:

—Ad verification systems – Instead of turning to direct response for ROI, Razorfish’s clients increased their spending dramatically on tools that would tell them whether or not an ad was placed correctly. Razorfish expects more growth for ad verifiers over the course of this year as well.

—Local online advertising – As the iPad and other similar devices breathe new life into local newspapers, local display and local search should also see a return to robust spending.

—In-game advertising – Gaming ads drove less than 3 percent of clients’ spending last year. But with gaming and social media continuing to mix with geo-based services, that’s expected to leap over the next several months.