First Primary Research on Search Activity in Ireland Presented at SMW 2007

By Martin Murray

CEO, Interactive Return

Until recently the marketing community has operated in an information vacuum in regard to both consumer and advertiser search activity in Ireland. How often do internet users search and how long do they spend online? When they search do they click on the organic or sponsored listings on the search engine results page and how often? How much are advertisers spending on search and do they forecast that their own search budgets will increase or decrease? 

Search Marketing World 2007 commissioned Amárach Research to discover the answers to these questions. Gerard O’Neill, Chief Executive of Amárach Research, presented the findings.

On the consumer side, a telephone survey of 1,000 internet users, a nationally representative sample, was conducted.  Overall, 53% of Irish adults are online with that number rising to 71% for males under 25 and 76% for females under 25. On average, 5.8 hours per week is spent online but 18-24 year olds spend 8.4 hours each week online.

A whopping 67% of 18-24 year olds use a search engine every day with 48% using search engines every day across all age groups. Just 2% of respondents say they never use search. 

What do users do once they have made a search? 32% say they only click on one of the top 5 links on the results page with a further 15% saying they will click on one of the links anywhere on the homepage.

What about sponsored listings such as Google Adwords? 3% of respondents say that they click on a sponsored listing almost every time they do a search with a further 15% of respondents clicking on a sponsored listing quite often. In comparison with other direct response media such as traditional direct mail these click through rates are very high but when you consider that the advertiser only pays when a click-through occurs it becomes, the effectiveness of this medium for the advertiser becomes evident.

So, are advertisers and advertising agencies voting for search with their media budgets? Amárach conducted online surveys with 54 advertisers and 41 advertising agencies. 59% of adveretisers and 78% of agencies say that their search marketing spend has increased in the last 12 months. 43% of advertisers say that search marketing is taking up an increasing proportion of online media spend with just 4% saying that search has a declining share of the overall online budget. In terms of effectiveness of various online media, 59% of advertisers report that search is more effective than other online advertising channels such as display and email. Just 6% say search is less effective than other online channels.

59% of advertisers and 73% of advertising agencies say that spending on online advertising will increase in 2007 compared to 2006.

According to Amárach Research, if Ireland follows the lead of the UK in search marketing, then spending on Search will rival the spend on TV channels such as TG4 and TV3 by 2010 and rival spending on RTE by 2012.