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Search Engine Marketing Managers Spent $9.4 Billion in 2006

Jay

According to SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, US search engine marketing managers and their companies spent 9.4 billion dollars in 2006. When you compare “State of Search Engine Marketing 2006” report with 2005 results, it show that search engine marketing spending has increased by 63 percent. These numbers far exceed the earlier projections that estimated 7.2 billion dollars would be spend on search engine marketing in 2006.

Where are search engine marketing managers spending their money?

The big winner of last year’s marketing budgets was pay-per-click advertising. Search engine marketing managers spent 86 percent or 8 billion dollars on PPC. Next in line was natural search engine optimization at 1.1 billion dollars. Other search engine marketing expenditures that were noted in the report were development of SEM technologies at 122 million dollars and paid inclusion at 94 million dollars.

So what are the search engine marketing spending projections for the next five years?

Search engine marketing is projected to continue to grow over the next five years to 18.6 billion dollars in the United States.

Kevin Newcomb offers some additional key metrics to the SEMPO report in his article, “Search Marketers Spent $9.4 Billion in 2006” on ClickZ News. SEMPO isn’t the only organization projecting spending in search engine marketing. In “SEMPO: Search Marketing Spending Passes $9B”, Wendy Davis mentions some statistics from an Interactive Advertising Bureau’s report, noting that search engine marketing only accounted for 40% of online ad revenue (around $3.2 billion) for the first six months of last year, which implies SEMPO’s report might be a little optimistic on search engine marketing spending. However, regardless of how much exactly was spent in 2006, both reports show that search engine marketing is a growing force in today’s marketing and advertising.