According to Forrester Research, in Europe the search engine market will generate 1.4 billion Euros of spending in 2005. The definition "search engine marketing" includes everything related to commercial search: paid listings, contextual search, site optimization, and paid inclusions. While search marketing’s share in online advertising will increase for another two years, Forrester believes it will start decreasing in 2007. The slowdown will be due to a probable increasing negative attitude of consumers towards paid listing, but also to the growth of rich media ads and the increase in the price of keywords.
Hellen Omwando, Consumer Markets Analyst at Forrester Research, says:
"While it's unlikely that prices in Europe will reach the same levels as in the US — where the same keyword might command five times the price than in Europe — increases will be significant enough to make it difficult for some marketers to justify the ROI of high prices; they won't be able to compete for popular keywords."
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