SEMPO Finds Most SEMs Willing To Pay More For Enhanced Targeting, Interest In Mobile Search And Video

According to SEMPO and its Annual State of Search Survey 2007, SEMs largely remain focused on search fundamentals: traffic, conversions, CTRs, and ROI. Very consistent with percentages in last year’s results, marketers and agencies are interested in direct sales (58 percent) and brand awareness (61 percent). But there’s new interest in video and mobile, as well as an apparent willingness to pay more for behavioral and/or demographic targeting.

SEMPO said that “43 percent of respondents indicated an interest in contextually targeted advertising attached to video search results. Within that segment, about half showed the highest levels of interest.” However, there’s price sensitivity and marketers generally want to pay the same or less for video search-related ads.

Roughly 40 percent of SEMPO survey respondents said they were interested in mobile search but indicated a lower degree of interest. Price sensitivity was again an issue: SEMs want to pay no more (or less) for mobile than they pay for conventional search ads. Right now, however, mobile is a “premium” product with much higher CPMs than online. That will likely change over time.

Here are some charts from the report:

Source: SEMPO

Where Do Search Dollars Come From?

Source: SEMPO

According to SEMPO, most SEMs would pay more to add behavioral or demographic targeting to their campaigns:

Source: SEMPO

SEMPO makes the full survey available to members on its site.