Rise in Mobile Spurs Growth in Search Marketing

When asked which trend has had the biggest impact on search marketing, 40% of business surveyed said it was the rise in mobile internet usage. Following closely behind that was the personalization of search results and behavioral targeting.
New tools aplenty, and yet 95% of the search marketing dollars are still being spent with our old friend Adwords. The Bing / Yahoo combo got 70% of the vote and a respectable 47% of respondents said they run PPC campaigns on Facebook.
The info comes from the new State of Search Marketing Report 2011, which is produced by Econsultancy. The results indicate a rise in social media marketing to the point where it’s nearly equal to that of paid search (74% vs 79%). Facebook usage alone has risen from 73% to 84% (that’s general Facebook for marketing, not just PPC).
Other key findings include:

• More companies are outsourcing search and social media. Only 44% of companies are now carrying out search engine optimization in-house, compared to 51% last year. Only 55% are doing social media marketing in-house, compared to 62% a year ago.

• Companies and agencies are increasingly using third party bid management technology for paid search marketing. Just under half of responding companies conducting search engine marketing rely on basic tools.

Overall, Econsultancy is predicting 16% growth in search marketing which is slightly higher than last year’s prediction. If the number is right, we’re looking at 19.3 billion in North America.
Where do you stand with search marketing? Are you spending more, less or about the same?
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