• by Shankar Gupta , November 9, 2005

Marketers often view search as a targeted, direct response form of advertising, but they're beginning to also see its potential for creating brand awareness and driving word of mouth, speakers at an Ad:Tech panel said Tuesday.

Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, said that search these days is less of a channel, and more of a medium of its own. "Search is becoming a major sub-medium on the Web," Rashtchy said. "Search is being used as a vehicle to influence consumer behavior."

He suggested that, rather than just driving clicks, search can be used to create awareness among targeted market segments. "There is an important influence of search beyond what has been leveraged," he said. "Search has a particular power as a targeted branding medium."

Panelist Joe Pilotta, vice president of research at BIGresearch LLC, presented data indicating that search marketers should aim beyond getting clicks from consumers. "Clicks and page views are the old models," he said.

But some search engine marketing professionals maintain that the demand for search is still focused toward direct marketing. "There's been a little bit of a shift towards that way," said Morgan Simonson, Efficient Frontier's director of eastern sales. "But very much so, people still use search as a direct response."