• by Tameka Kee , December 13, 2007

Gord Hotchkiss says no. He argues that big agencies throw pennies at search compared to their spends in traditional media -- and its because they have way too much invested in those media plans to change the status quo.

So while they "do" search, they don't "get" search. He used the famous example of the Ontario Tourism Board's choice of buying long tail search terms like "Ontario lake wine getaways" instead of real, solid head of tail terms like "Ontario vacation" at the behest of their agency because the broad terms would have been too expensive. The agency saw fit to spend at least 50K for full-page print ads and TV spots -- but didn't see the value in search. They clearly didn't "get it."

RPA's Mike Margolin says that agencies do "get" search -- just not as well as SEM firms do, and they don't need to. That's why they partner with firms for bid management and landing page optimization. And while they can't afford to make massive mistakes (Ontario Tourism Board) they can't start allocating search budgets at the very beginning of the strategic planning process.

Big agencies have to be focused on branding, direct response, performance and the myriad of other marketing objectives. They can't put the "search cart before the branding horse" when it comes to launching big products -- because they'll have to spend way too much to compete with other, more established brands in the same space.