May 16, 2008 | Friday

SEMPO: Advertisers keen on behavioural targeting

By Jackie Danicki - Blogger in Marketing |News |Search Engines |Search Research

SEMPO - the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization - is a global non-profit which works to increase awareness of search engine marketing on a worldwide basis. (Latitude COO Richard Gregory serves as the UK chair of SEMPO.) New stats from SEMPO’s latest state of the market survey have just been published. The numbers shine new light on what advertisers are willing to pay for - and pay more for, if necessary.

The metrics:

Four-fifths of advertisers would invest more in online marketing if they were able to incorporate behavioural targeting into pay-per-click search campaigns.
Nearly 60 per cent of advertisers would spend more if they could target demographics such as age and gender.
For a combination of behavioural targeting and demographic targeting, advertisers would pay an average of 11 per cent more.

Despite the strong interest in behavioural targeting, there is not a matching level of investment from advertisers. Nearly half of them say they are not currently targeting searchers, though they plan to at some point in the next year.

Sometimes advertisers’ hands are forced by unexpected or extreme circumstances. A global economic downturn may well focus the mind - and budget - when getting as much value for investment as possible becomes even more important. The SEMPO survey was conducted late last year, when such pressure may not have been felt or even widely anticipated.

One thing is for sure: Other areas of marketing are suffering at the hands of search. Print magazine ads and direct mail are just two of the places from where advertisers report they are diverting spend in order to plunge more into effective search.