"Search marketing cannot live in a silo anymore. It needs to be part of a 360 strategy for delivering marketing solutions," said Nasreen Madhany, global CEO for Neo@Ogilvy, in the statement announcing the deal.

"Search is now bigger than search engines," Greg Smith, Neo's chief operating officer, said in an interview. "We're coming into the world of linking strategies, and GSI not only has a very good organic search capability, but also an extraordinarily good strategic capability to help paid and organic work together."

Smith also sees a bigger picture: "Search for us is this incredible focus group, and we want to use that as one of our diagnostic tools to learn about consumers and their behavior."

GSI--which specializes in search engine optimization, brand reputation management, and training for global enterprise companies--is based in Connecticut and Oregon, with additional offices and affiliates in the UK, Japan, China, Sweden and Switzerland.

GSI founder Bill Hunt has worked for years with IBM, a huge Ogilvy client, which made the deal a logical fit. It was also seen as an inevitable step as agencies deficient in SEM seek to bolster their capabilities.

With a combined global reach of 24 offices in 21 countries, the integration of GSI's existing network will help Neo in its efforts to connect consumers with brands via search around the world, said Madhany.

"The integration of GSI into Neo@Ogilvy will allow us to deliver end-to-end digital marketing solutions to clients throughout Neo's global network," Madhany said.

Neo@Ogilvy, owned by WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather, is a full-service digital and direct media company that manages digital media investment for global clients covering digital advertising and direct marketing, digital and direct TV, direct response print and email, email marketing, search marketing, and new forms of digital media such as blogs and vlogs.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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