SEMPO Survey on Search Engine Marketing

Here's an interesting report that I came across on the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organisation (SEMPO) research page.

The State of Search Engine Marketing 2004 (pdf)

The survey was undertaken to look at, amongst other things, the size of the search marketing industry, where advertising spend was going and to identify key industry trends. The data came from interviews with 31 leading industry experts, secondary research and online surveys with 288 search engine advertisers and SEM agencies. Here are some of the highlights of the report:

• Brand awareness is advertisers' top objective for SEM programs
• ROI is outpacing inflation
• SEM is poaching budget from shopping directory listings, web advertising, email
  and print ads
• Senior executives consider SEM a high business priority at 50% of advertiser
  respondents
• Advertisers plan to increase their SEM spending 41% on average in 2005
• Most advertisers plan to manage the majority of their SEM spending in-house

This report makes interesting reading both for those looking to justify Search Marketing spends and for those looking for industry trends