October 2009

Can Bigwigs Predict the Future of Search?

The search engine marketing industry changes so rapidly that it's sometimes hard to keep up with it, much less predict the future of it.  Nevertheless, at this month'sSearch Marketing Expo East, a panel of "bigwigs" attempted to peer into their crystal balls and predict the future of search and digital marketing in general.  Some of their key points included:

  • Advertising budgets are moving from traditional media to digital, although it's not a dollar to dollar transition - overall budgets are lower due to the recession.  Traditional media is not going away - it's morphing to drive people online to continue interaction and engagement.

  • Search and social media are interrelated in a healthy and exciting way.  Not only does social media lend search marketers a way to create additional optimizable content and links (as we've discussedpreviously), but marketers can use search insights to benefit social marketing, such as watching what people are searching for to determine what content they should be creating.

  • While people surveyed often claim to be concerned about online privacy issues, in reality (and particularly among younger Internet users), they don't seem overly worried.  Personalization is less creepy when marketers give users exactly what they're searching for.  Perhaps even changing our language from "targeted advertising" to "tailored advertising" would help.

  • Search is far from solved - we're still crying for a game-changing challenger to enter the market that will stand everything on its head.  People are starting to search across different channels (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) - any repository of information is a searchable database (we talked about this last month).

  • The importance of trusted peer networks (social media) will continue to increase (this very recent article shows the first steps in fulfilling this prediction).

  • Attribution has been a big issue in our industry this past year or so.  That is, most analytics software today gives the "last click" credit for an online lead or sale.  For example, if someone ran a search and came to a site, and then later saw a banner ad and visited again and converted - the banner ad would get the credit or attribution for the conversion rather than the search engine.  It was projected that attribution will continue to get more complex and the "last click" model will be dead.

For more predictions, see our blog post on this session.  Links to other posts from SMX East, and all our coverage, are at right under "Search Advisory Posts."

About Us

Prominent Placement, Inc. is an award-winning, full-service search engine marketing (SEM) firm, delivering ROI that traditional marketing channels can't touch, with a level of service that raises the bar. Since 2001, Prominent Placement has managed the entire SEM process for clients across the U.S., empowering businesses to focus on what they do best. Prominent Placement's customized solutions are backed by hard numbers, giving decision makers the confidence they need to make smarter decisions.

For more information, visit our website or call 888.SEM.MKTR (888.736.6587).

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