The big agencies don’t seem content to merely beef up their search talent with key hires. Most are building dedicated search marketing functions. In February this year, Mediabrands launched performance-marketing firm Reprise Media, which one month later was appointed to oversee Unilever’s search and social media activities in Australia.
Aegis Media also began expanding its search marketing agency brand iProspect across Asia-Pacific, and plans to open up to 10 new offices in eight countries after appointing Peter Hunter as regional CEO.
Back in 2007, search was thought to account for 43 per cent of total global online adspend, although Universal McCann regional interactive director Adrian Toy estimated that figure was less than 20 per cent in Asia. But Anna Chan, managing director of Reprise Media Asia, projects search accounts for about 35 per cent in Asia today.
Antony Yiu, managing director of iPropsect Hong Kong and regional search director of iProspect North Asia, adds that in markets such as Japan and Korea, the agency has seen almost 50 per cent of online spend being allocated to search, and clients in industries such as travel and trade have spent more than that in 2010.
Recent global events have also made search a popular marketing staple in 2010 - in particular, the global recession, which has helped to shift the digital landscape in search marketing’s favour.
“In 2009, because of the market situation, clients started exploring other more cost-effective advertising channels online and search was one of them,” Yiu says, adding that after experimenting with search marketing for almost a year, many clients are surprised to find this new online channel can not only provide a measurable media but also a high return on advertising spending.
“Therefore, when doing the budget planning for 2010, clients decided to shift more budget to search, which prompted the agency to ramp up its operations to fulfil the increase in demand.”
Clients too have increased opportunity to get involved in search in 2010. In late 2009, Bing and Google both announced they would adopt real-time search, which meant they would introduce a Twitter function to reflect audiences’ growing interest and trust in social commentary.
Visual search (resembling a typical, text-only search function except that it includes images and video next to the appropriate links), location-specific search and mobile are also predicted to be big in 2010.
“Key expansion includes integration of search with other channels, such as paid search and organic search, search and social, search and mobile,” GroupM’s head of search Rosemary Lising says of current trends. “And deeper analytics. Analytics in search is evolving to deliver deeper consumer insights and improved results. Advancement in technologies will facilitate the mining of the data, however it is human intervention that will drive identifying and actioning the insight.”
Holding companies may be bolstering their search agencies, but independent agencies may still have the competitive advantage. According to dgm’s group head of search James Hawkins, agency holding groups may encounter operational hurdles because they have to work across individual agencies and there may be problems with conflicts of interest. They also lose a level of flexibility by focusing on the region’s largest brands as opposed to the potential moneymakers.
“There are so many good-quality search agencies that are bloodying the big agency groups’ noses because a big criteria for winning pitches is having a real specialty in search,” Hawkins says. “Holding groups had been outsourcing this role to industry specialists and they now want a share of this. But they have to understand that it’s not necessarily MNCs fuelling search growth - that’s not where the serious growth is. But right now these small enterprises are not on the big agency groups’ radars.”
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Email anita.davis@media.asia
This article was originally published in the 22 April 2010 issue of Media.
Holding companies chase their share of the growing search market
Although search has been steadily growing in prominence for marketers over the last two years in Asia, this year search-specific agencies within holding companies have mushroomed.
