Special Report: 3,007 Marketers Reveal Search Marketing Costs, Clicks, & Conversion Results.(cost per click)

The biggest surprise in MarketingSherpa's 2004 Search Marketing Survey results was that neither marketers nor their agencies voted any type of search campaign to be "very effective."

A $3.78 billion ad tactic (our estimate SEO plus paid search costs) mushrooms out of nowhere in just a handful of years, and it's not "very effective"?! Here's the breakdown of what folks actively using each tactic thought of their results:

Very Good Somewhat Not Good BAD Optimization 31% 50% 14% 5% Paid Ads 34% 47% 12% 6% Paid Inclusion 18% 51% 23% 8%

As you can see, "somewhat effective" won out every time. Perhaps we shouldn't have been startled, because this search-is-moderately-effective trend has shown up on every survey we've conducted to marketers of all varieties (b-to-b, online ad specialists, Google experts, etc.) for the past two years.

Why? Well, our guess is a combination of factors, including: - PPC click costs are rising - SEM newbies are flooding the field with inept campaigns - Search algorithm changes make consistent SEO …