Paid search spending forecasted to hit $10 billion by 2009
This study from MarketWire; a new study from eMarketer reports that “paid search advertising spending, slowing from its meteoric rise the last few years, will still hit $10 billion by 2009.” More from the article:
“eMarketer forecasts that US paid search ad spending in the US in 2006 will grow by 26.2%, a full seven percentage points less than last year’s 33.2% gain. After triple-figure growth rates earlier in the decade, more modest growth rates will prevail through the rest of the decade.
“Clearly our growth rates are slowing,” said Google’s chief financial officer, George Reyes, on February 28, 2006, noting that the company’s revenue growth is decelerating because of the “law of large numbers.” In other words, hyper-growth can’t be sustained forever. And as Google goes, so goes the search marketing industry.”
I think it’s a bit early to send the search marketing industry off into the sunset, especially since there’s more search engines and search technology out there than what’s in the Googleplex. The article included this very encouraging quote from David Hallerman, author of the report:
“As this market matures, the search engines will need to refine and improve their products, which will create greater opportunities for search marketers to unearth more effective niches,” says Mr. Hallerman. “Such maturity will include more vertical search for better targeting, and a sharp rise in local search, as both users and advertisers increasingly realize that the Internet is the best place to make contact with any kind or size of business.”
