MUMBAI: The search engine marketing business which is worth $10 billion globally is growing in India. Search advertising aimed at Indian internet users is estimated to be around Rs 2.3 billion. Indian firms spend Rs 700 million.
A study has been released by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in association with search marketing firm Pinstorm. The study is called the State of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) In India. It aims to shed light on the evolution of search marketing in the country. 40,000 marketers in India use this platform.
SEM for the uninitiated is a set of marketing techniques used to increase the visibility of a website in a search engine’s results. SEM involves biding for the right word at a cost on search engines like yahoo!, Google and MSN. Search results get better with more keywords. The long tail theory states that the greater the number of words that a company bids on the lower is the cost of acquiring results. Some advertisers bid on 50 words or less but there are those particularly globally who bid on a million search terms. The client is charged either on a cost per click (CPC) basis or and visits generated through a search engine or on a cost per acquisition basis (CPA). Here the results paid for are either leads of enquiries or sales.
Pinstorm founder and CEO Mahesh Murthy says, “22 of the top 50 and 37 of the top 100 search advertisers by keyword volume are from within Indian operations. India produces over a billion online searches each month and the number is growing as people research choices, product details and prices for every sot of buying decision. These range from travel to insurance, education and even a film career.”
The top SEM buyers in the past year. The top five spenders are all Internet companies.
Naukri, together with 99acres and Jeevan Saathi Rs 97 million; Ebay Rs 92 million; Monster together with JobsAhead Rs 64 million; Google Rs 58 million; Yahoo Rs 32 million; Citibank Rs 27 million; HP Rs 25 million; World Space Rs 20 million.
In terms of sectors spending on search advertising this is what the break up looks like:
Retail, ecommerce Rs 189,679,644
Technology Rs 116,153,190
Travel Rs 173,650,230
Automotive Rs 10,321,020
Banking, Financial Services Rs 145,039,410
Dating, Matrimonial Rs 31,681,530
Education Rs 24,571,674
General Online Rs 227,842,308
Jobs Rs 175,270,878
Media Rs 41,113,170
Made for Ad Sense Rs 155,725,416
NGO Rs 11,697,696
Property Rs 25,517,916
The study notes that you can never have too many keywords. Search engines including Google recently announced that almost half of their search enquiries have never been asked before. One needs to keep adding to the keyword list and also think of things that have not occurred to the competition. Travel sites routinely buy and deploy over three million keywords each on search marketing campaigns. Longer phrases convert better.
The study notes that buying sponsored links on a page can be effective. Many users do not distinguish between the natural organic results on the left hand side of a page and the sponsored links on the right hand side. Pinstorm studies show that between five to 40 per cent of users click on sponsored links instead of organic results.
Hence finding new search terms is important. This is what Pinstorm calls Undiscovered Gems. One way is to pay for misspelt words. Often people type in a hurry and the word is spelt wrongly though the intent is the same. Savings of as much as 90 per cent are possible using this route. Pinstrom has developed customised tools to generate these search terms and each have in house keyword databases in excess of 10 million keywords.
Advertisers and search specialist firms realise that the long tail is important in their search efforts and routinely manage portfolios in excess of 100,000 keywords for each client. Global marketers who operate in multiple languages and across countries have a presence of several million keywords. Some search specialist firms have moved to a pay for performance model.