Search Advertising Forecast 2005-2009

[Chris Sherman]

The numbers are in: Paid search led the growth in online advertising in 2004 with a 34% increase over 2003. Display ads also did respectably well, with a 24% increase, though Jupiter Research says that paid search will increase in prominence at the expense of other types of online advertising over the coming decade.

Today's SearchDay article, Online Ads & Search: Looking Back, Looking Forward (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3459961), covers a recent Search Engine Strategies conference panel where Jupiter Research shared its findings about the paid search market. A longer version (http://searchenginewatch.com/_subscribers/articles/article.php/3459951) of this story for Search Engine Watch members (http://searchenginewatch.com/benefits/article.php) goes into detail about the specific drivers of growth for online search ads, including demographics, searcher behavior and other factors. The longer article also details eight "things to pay attention to" that Jupiter Research believes will be crucial for successful search marketing campaigns in 2005.

Comments welcome!

[plastic paddy]

It was interesting to note the increase in the average CPC over the last few years. Surely this is unsustainable and will reach a plateau at some point in time, which may replace more emphasis on traditional search engine optimisation.

I can only imagine that more space on the likes of google will be allocated to sponsored links to maintain the income growth in this area.

I guess in the meantime we need to continue offering the right mix of CPC and traditional SEO to our punters....