Last year the spending for the SEM industry reached $9.4 billion. Projected spend for 2007 was set at $11.5 billion, and the results are in showing a hefty $12.2 billion, exceeding all expectations. The number reflect the revenues posted by the major search engines, which rallied and actually beat revenue estimates despite the apparent slowdown in growth and drop in search shares.
Because of this robust increase, projected spend for 2008, originally set at $18.6 billion, has jumped to a staggering $25.2 billion.
Advertisers indicated a strong interest in mobile and video search options, but said that pricing would have to be comparable to traditional search. They also claimed that they could handle a small increase in price for paid search, but not exceeding 30%.
80% of respondents said they would be willing to pay more for behavioral targeting on pay-per-click campaigns, and nearly 60% will spend up to 11% more on demographic targeting such as age and gender.
Dollars are being taken from budget areas such as print magazine advertising, direct mailings and even website development to pay for online marketing.
‘Organic SEO’ popularity also continued to rise, reaching 91% – up from 87% in 2006 and 80% in 2005.
Tags: advertising, mobile search, targeting