SEMPO Launches Survey

[Joseph Morin]

Today, SEMPO launched the most comprehensive study to date (http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2004/10/emw164722.htm) on the search engine marketing industry on the size and impact of current Search Engine Marketing (SEM) activities and spending.

[Elisabeth]

ok. I already broke the survey - I was about 10 to 15 questions in, and it cycled me back to questions I'd already answered.

:(

happened right after this question:
207. Approximately what percentage of your overall spending for an average Paid Placement program is spent in the form of Contextually Targeted Text Ads?

[Joseph Morin]

I just contacted the survey administrator at SEMPO about that Elisabeth, they're looking into it.

[Rick Bruner]

Sorry not to respond earlier, I got tangled up in other stuff. I'm the author of the survey and the lead analyst on this research.

My suspicion of what's the problem is that in fact you're not looping back to the same questions, but similar questions repeat for a different set of marketing tactics. That is, we go through a similar set of questions first for Paid Placement, then for Paid Inclusion, then for Organic SEO and so on. You just might not have noticed that the questions pertained at that point to Paid Inclusion instead of Paid Placement. Judging from the page you said you last completed, I think that's the end of the first section and the start of the next.

The survey tool should have a persistent memory of you (so long as you don't have cookies disabled), so that if you click the link to start the survey again it will return you to where you left off. Have a look and see if that's the problem. We've added some text in red to the top of that page to try to clarify the point of confusion; I know it's a liability in the survey's design, but I couldn't think of another way to accomplish the same thing.

Thanks anyway for your interest.

Rick

[NFFC]

>My suspicion of what's the problem is that in fact you're not looping back to the same questions, but similar questions repeat for a different set of marketing tactics.

That's OK then, obviously the user is at fault.

>so long as you don't have cookies disabled

What % of SEO's compared to the general population do you think have cookies disabled?

[fathom]

Ya I got a bit further, don't remember the number, but asking for value added tools to enhance campaigns.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

I think it's appropriate to point out that this survey is very limited:

Quote from article: "... survey to estimate the size of the North American advertiser spending on search engine marketing"

So for companies primarily focusing outside the US I am not sure of how much value this will be ...

[Elisabeth]

. You just might not have noticed that the questions pertained at that point to Paid Inclusion instead of Paid Placement.

that was my first thought too - I'm pretty sure I double checked the wording to rule that out.

[mcanerin]

I went through without a problem - maybe it's fixed now...

Ian