• NY Times, Tuesday, March 14, 2006 12 PM

Marketers are embracing search marketing as never before, so naturally their ad agencies are following suit and investing in the nascent discipline. Last year, search marketing reached an estimated $5.1 billion in expenditures and is growing at a much faster clip than advertising in traditional media. A recent forecast predicted the market would reach almost $6.5 billion this year and exceed $10 billion by 2009. The latest agency to step up its search game is OgilvyOne Worldwide, which is forming a unit dedicated to search marketing called NeoSearch@Ogilvy that will operate within Neo- @Ogilvy, a global digital and direct-marketing media division that was opened last month. NeoSearch@Ogilvy is starting with 150 employees in offices in markets that include Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Singapore and the United States. Clients include Allstate, Cisco, I.B.M., Novartis and Sprint Nextel. Other big agencies have taken similar steps in order to offer search marketing services internally rather than requiring clients to go to independent specialist agencies.

Read the whole story at NY Times »