Forrester also predicts that by 2010, European marketers will
spend almost €3 billion on search marketing.
Search marketing – commercial search that includes paid
listings, contextual search, site optimisation, and paid inclusions
– has to date mostly been the province of large companies, but
according to Forrester's new report, SMEs are now also
set to include search marketing as part of their marketing mix.
"Growing numbers of on-line shoppers, on-line advertising
budgets, and pay-for-performance search marketing models will
attract both large and small firms," said Hellen Omwando, Consumer
Markets Analyst at Forrester Research.
In the UK, currently the largest European on-line ad market,
marketers in travel, finance, auto and retail will fuel the growth
of search marketing to over €1billion in 2010 – up from a predicted
€763 million at the end of 2005.
But Forrester also expects on-line ad spending to decrease in
2007. This will be due to a growing consumer backlash against paid
listings, which will turn off some marketers, and the growth of
rich media ads, which will pull ad spending away from other forms
of off-line and on-line advertising – including search marketing as
we know it today. Finally, the price of keyword searches will
inevitably increase.
"While it's unlikely that prices in Europe will reach the same
levels as in the
US
– where the same keyword might
command five times the price than in Europe – increases will be
significant enough to make it difficult for some marketers to
justify the
ROI
[Return on Investment] of high prices;
they won't be able to compete for popular keywords," said
Omwando.
But good
ROIs
can be found today, according to Tino
Nombro, Managing Director of Edinburgh-based search engine
optimisation and web site promotion firm Ambergreen. "You've got to
approach search engine marketing with the
ROI
in
mind," he says. "And you've got to monitor your
ROI
."
Ambergreen's clients include Marks & Spencer, Mercedes,
Boots, Channel 4 and Hamleys. Nobro says that his clients sometimes
see returns of ten or twenty times on the investment, which should
make search engine marketing an easy sell. But he acknowledges that
lots of people claim to be able to offer the service.
"Bad design can easily make a site drop in the search engine
rankings. So I'd always recommend that you speak to a specialist
rather than someone who just claims they can do it," he says.
Forrester also says that the trend of industry players moving
beyond search engines to forms of on-line marketing that blend
display ads and sponsored keyword listings is also likely to gain
steam in Europe.
Search engines will respond with search types and business
models that combine the best of display ads and search. For
example: personalised search marketing linked to e-mail
conversations and content page viewing histories; comparison search
engines and vertical search; and video-based search for branding
purposes.
As a result, says Forrester, there will by hyper-partnering
between search engines, media sites and retail sites to create
networks of hybrid search marketing models.
