• NY Times, Tuesday, March 14, 2006 10:19 AM

Agencies don't want to have to go to search marketing specialists anymore, says The New York Times. This isn't exactly a secret, but recent activity underscores the desire for ad shops to offer search services internally, rather than requiring their clients to hire yet another agency. OgilvyOne Worldwide is the latest big agency  to step up its search efforts, having formed a new unit dedicated to SEM, NeoSearch@Ogilvy, which will be part of Neo-@Ogilvy, the agency's month-old direct marketing media division. The big agencies may be a little slow to react to the red-hot search sector, which accounted for nearly half of all online spending in 2003 and 2004. Having said that, it will be difficult for them to grow search marketing units internally, as a search marketing team is only is as good as the technology it uses. Other big agencies will likely make acquisitions to firmly establish a search marketing presence. Last year, search accounted for $5.1 billion of the estimated $13 billion online advertising market, according to eMarketer, which projects search spending to rise to $6.5 billion this year, and surpass $10 billion by 2010.

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