Founded in 2002, SEMPO is a non-profit organization focused on providing education, generating market research, and promoting a greater understanding of the search industry and how it relates to the realm of marketing. Gordon Hotchkiss, President/CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions and SEMPO Chairperson, stopped by to talk with WebProNews at PubCon about the organization’s current State of the Market Survey.

One of the growing trends that Gordon has noticed is the shifting attitude of advertising agencies toward the idea of search engine marketing. The practice is become more widely accepted and embraced by traditional/mainstream marketers by in large.

As the amount of advertising expenditure in the realm of search marketing continues to increase, the need for relevant data and metrical analysis becomes all the more paramount. This is the mission that SEMPO has committed to undertaking by gathering metrics concerning areas such as paid search, bid prices, etc., all as part of the organization’s comprehensive end-of-year surveys.

According to SEMPO’s 2005 State of the Market Survey, advertisers in North America increased their ad spending by 44 percent over 2004, for a total of $5.75 billion. Although search engine optimization was the top tactic funded by marketers, paid placement campaigns comprised the bulk of the total spending.

The survey also found that much of SEM funding came from a shift from other programs and did not represent newly created funding. The survey also revealed that advertisers were approaching pricing limits in terms of click prices.

Gordon says that he plans to report some of the preliminary findings from the 2006 survey at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago, running December 4-7. The complete report of findings will be published in the first quarter of 2007.

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