Search engine marketing gets local rev-up

• Google & PurpleClick target SMEs
• Use recession as a timely boost
• Online ad pie to hit US$400m by 2013

Singapore - Google and its sales partner PurpleClick have outlined a new plan to educate SMEs on the value of search engine marketing (SEM), with a series of events and training seminars to be held in Singapore this year.

Leonard Tan, PurpleClick's managing director, said the full understanding of SEM by organisations across Singapore is still relatively low. In partnership with Google, his agency will be educating its existing clients to maximize the leveraging power of Google AdWords this year - at a time when every cent spent on marketing matters. Google recently renewed PurpleClick as its authoried AdWords reseller in Singapore.

Google AdWords are text-based ads targeted on the user's search queries. To create one of these links to their website, advertisers must first create the test-based ad, then choose a list of search keywords which will trigger the ad and then pay for each keyword through an online auction.

"The key value of this product is that it's performance-based," PurpleClick's Tan said.

"The user can search for whatever they want and you can advertise for whatever keywords but assuming no one clicks or resonates with the ad text that you are showing on the search engine, you don't get charged. Our customers only pay when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website."

PurpleClick and Google are planning a number of training seminars and events in 2009 to help educate the market. Tan said PurpleClick is focusing on educating the market and not on revenue this year.

"We're not profiting a lot in the short-term but we are in for the long haul which is why we see eye-to-eye on that transparency," he said,

Tan said it's important to build those foundations now, as the growth of online advertising in Singapore continues to grow.

Research by Frost and Sullivan shows that Singapore's online advertising market, which was worth US$142.1 million in 2007, will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.5% until 2013, to reach US$413.5 million.

By 2013, online advertising is expected to account for more than 9.3% of Singapore's total ADEX (advertising expenditure). In Singapore, paid search advertising accounted for 44% (US$62.5 million) of online advertising revenues in 2007 and this segment is expected to continue growing at a annual rate of 22.1% between 2008 and 2013.