SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, has released the results of their annual State of the Market Survey. There are some interesting findings:
- 40% of advertiser respondents reported that they are actively promoting their brand on social media
- of this 40%, 4 out of 5 advertisers use Facebook to promote their brand
- Total Advertiser SEM spend in 2008 was $13.5 billion
- SEM spending is predicted to hit $26.1 billion in 2013
- Local Search on the rise? 34% of respondents had tried locally targeted search stating that "it works ok". Hmm did Google have an inside track on this as they have recently announced that they are getting more local.
- The popularity of Organic SEO has risen significantly, from 80% in 2005 and 76% in 2006, nine out of ten advertisers using it in the past couple of years. This backs up a post that we did in December on SEO in 2009. Yet paid search continues to receive the majority of the Search budget.
- Traditional forms of advertising media (print, TV, Yellow Pages etc) are experiencing shifts in budget over to Search. It was interesting to see that budget is also shifting from Website development. Perhaps organizations are holding off on those site redesigns that were in the works for the past few months?
- only 14% of advertisers claim that they plan on spending less in 2009 than in 2008 (just over 50% stated that they were going to increase their spend in 2009. This is down from about 66% from 2007.)
- Among the advertisers polled, brand awareness is the top objective of Paid Placement (sales was a close second)
- The most popular metrics to track success of SEM programs were site traffic, converison rate, click-thru rate, and ROI followed by cost per click, CPA and total number of online sales. It was interesting to see that as brand awareness is the top objective of paid placement, yet brand impact was one lowest ranked metrics that was being tracked to gauge the success of SEM programs
Something that was pointed out was that 75% of advertisers are willing to pay more for behavioral targeting while only 51% were willing to pay more for demographic targeting. I understand the need to use this data to push targeted ads based on the information you gather, but with the consumers being more educated and savvy about their options, I question how this "push" model helps to build trust and a long-term relationship with potential consumers?
As mentioned there were some interesting findings in the report. With the dynamic nature of the online space, it will be intersting to see how much this changes in 2009.Labels: SEMPO State of the Market Survey |
