According to a study conducted by Jupiter Research, sixty five percent of advertisers will increase their spending in search marketing in the coming year. Overall, advertisers are pleased with the return on investment (ROI) that they are seeing from the dollars that have been spent thus far in search.
While most advertisers are pleased with the ROI, they aren’t exactly holding hands and singing “We Love Search” just yet. In the Jupiter survey, many advertisers expressed concerns over rising keyword prices, as well as what impact (if any) search marketing efforts were having in offline campaigns.
Still, advertisers are by-in-large very satisfied with the current direction of search marketing, and the increased spending projections for 2007 only serve to reinforce that mindset.
“Very few people are dissatisfied with search. The ones that are tend to be smaller advertisers managing less than 1,000 keywords,” Kevin Heisler, JupiterResearch analyst and lead author of the report, told ClickZ.
“We see many advertisers getting more aggressive with their spending, especially agencies. They’ve figured out what makes search so successful, and are content with the ROI.”
As with any field, there is always room for improvement. Data from the Jupiter study suggests that advertisers have struggled in the past to properly interpret analytics, a fact that may contribute to the lack of effectiveness in some campaigns.
The pendulum is beginning to swing in the other direction, though. As Kevin Newcomb writes in his coverage from Search Engine Watch, search marketers are becoming more adept at gauging which metrics to pursue:
Large search marketers are becoming more savvy with aligning their measurement with their goals. Among large advertisers with more than $50 million in annual revenues, 45 percent of marketers reported an objective of lead-generation, while 37 percent measure that objective on a regular basis. Among advertisers with annual revenues between $15 and $50 million, 39 percent say lead-generation is an objective, and 33 percent measure it.
This data, along with the other findings from the Jupiter study, suggest that 2007 is looking to be one of the biggest yet for search marketing.
