Search Engine Marketing to Projected to Reach $25.2 billion in 2011

Monday, March 17th, 2008 by Janet Meiners

Search Engine Marketing to Projected to Reach $25.2 billion in 2011

The nonprofit Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) surveyed over 867 search engine advertisers and SEM agencies to get a picture of the state of the search engine marketing industry. The 2007 SEMPO State of the Market Survey shows that contrary to worries about the economy, search engine marketing budgets have risen even higher than projected.

That’s the findings SEMPO is releasing today at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in New York. They found that things look rosy for the search engine marketing industry. The North American SEM industry grew from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $12.2 billion in 2007. That’s more than earlier projections of $11.5 billion in 2007. Forecasts for this year was that the industry would reach $25.2 billion by 2011. Again, the projection is up significantly – last year the projection was $18.6 billion.

Spending on search engine marketing in North American is now projected to grow to $25.2 billion in 2011, up significantly (over 6 billion) from the forecast a year ago which was $18.6 billion. As the story repeats – marketers are shifting their advertising from offline advertising to spending more on paid search.

This should be especially good news for Google (and Google shareholders), since it’s the only search engine in the top four to get a bigger share of the market. 97% of the marketers survey use Google AdWords. 70% utilize Yahoo Sponsored Search and less marketers use MSN and Ask.com than last year.

“Search marketing spending is increasing at the expense of print magazine advertising,website development and other marketing functions, as marketers essentially shift the portions of their spending pie, following consumers as they increasingly rely on search engines to conduct pre-purchase research.”

Some of the reasons for the growth is that more small and midsize business are going online and using paid search. Plus the cost of advertising is going up because of more competition. Right now 87.4% of advertisers in the survey use paid search. The part that most surprises me is that SEO accounts for just 10.5% of their total marketing spend.

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8 comments on “Search Engine Marketing to Projected to Reach $25.2 billion in 2011”

Search Engine Optimization Journal Says:

March 17th, 2008 at 9:30 am

This is great news for all of us eh? I guess we’ll be sharing new ideas and thoughts for at least a few years more!
» Search Engine Marketing Is Growing By The Dollar Pay Per Click Journal Says:

March 17th, 2008 at 10:29 am

[...] Search engine marketing is doing much better than projected. Based on a SEMPO survey of SEMs, more people are spending money on search marketing and they are spending more money on search marketing than was projected a year ago. It seems that small and mid-size businesses are taking money away from their off line advertising budgets and moving it to their online budgets. The part about this that I found interesting was this little statement at Marketing Pilgrim: This should be especially good news for Google (and Google shareholders), since it’s the only search engine in the top four to get a bigger share of the market. 97% of the marketers survey use Google AdWords. 70% utilize Yahoo Sponsored Search and less marketers use MSN and Ask.com than last year. [...]
Webmaster and SEO Forum Says:

March 17th, 2008 at 11:28 am

Yes the market is really growing so the previuos share holders who bought them in cheap rates that time might have got higher rates…
Now a days each and every owner of website needs SEO.
Jayson Says:

March 17th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

Great news! I think that SEO will become a larger portion of that budget in years to come. It seems like more and more people are learning what SEO is but that most still don’t. As the word spreads and people start getting good results the industry should pick up. I wouldn’t be surprised if search engine marketing expenditures exceed 25 billion in 2011.
Mobile guy Says:

March 17th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

Gimme some piece of that money
Clicksharp Marketing » Blog » using internet for purchasing decisions Says:

March 19th, 2008 at 8:40 am

[...] will come through. Running an online ad campaign is no different–and the very existence of a burgeoning search engine marketing industry is evidence of [...]
wogan.may » What’s up with the comment spam? Says:

July 5th, 2008 at 7:58 am

[...] via spam emails that they recieve. Search marketing is easier, highly accurate, effective, and growing – which would make SPAM the low end of the long tail (and an annoying one at best). Are these [...]
woganmay.com | What’s up with the comment spam? Says:

August 14th, 2008 at 3:34 am

[...] via spam emails that they recieve. Search marketing is easier, highly accurate, effective, and growing – which would make SPAM the low end of the long tail (and an annoying one at best). Are these [...]

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