We spent a good minute scratching the ol’ noggin over these two charts from SEMPO’s 2010 “State of Search Engine Marketing” report. They show that this year, 47% of surveyed businesses said they handle search in-house. Last year, no one said they handle search in house. A careful read reveals a note stating that “in house” wasn’t an option last year. Since none of the other answers are appropriate for respondents running search in-house, and we don’t have one of those handy “n=” captions tipping us off as to whether in-house search marketers skipped the question or entered a misleading answer last year, we can’t actually compare results year-over-year. So why even publish the 2009 chart?

Focusing on 2010 hardly clarifies the issue. We’re very curious about search provider choices, but this categorization is confusing. How would Razorfish Search’s clients respond? With 96 full-time search people and an average tenure over three years, we undoubtedly qualify as a “paid search specialist” and a “SEO specialist.” Though search is only one of many digital services Razorfish provides, some clients perceive us as a “search agency” because help with search is what they originally came to us for. “Digital Marketing Agency” might seem to be the best fit, unless our client considers that Razorfish is a leader in experience design, site creative and technology — projects that don’t fit neatly under the “Marketing Agency” header. At least we can rule out “PR agency”!

One question for our friend Sara Holoubek of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization: Did you outsource your search survey to a “survey expert” or a “search expert”?

Below is our list of articles that caught our attention this week.

1. Clients Say Shops Are Too ‘Reactive‘ (AdWeek): It’s easy to think that clients want us to react to their requests. Not really. Clients (at least the good ones) want us to partner with them and proactively come up with solutions to meet their business challenges. It’s a subtle difference and we enjoyed the reminder.
2. Apple’s Spat with Google is Getting Personal (New York Times): It’s been fascinating watching the Google / Apple Rivalry unfold. The two companies have a fundamentally different approach to world: devices or platforms, closed or open, a multitude of devices linked together through software or an all Apple world? No doubt, the rivalry has become personal: (from the article) At the heart of their dispute is a sense of betrayal: Mr. Jobs believes that Google violated the alliance between the companies by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone. In short, he feels that his former friends at Google picked his pocket.
3. Interest in Effective Marketing Campaign Management Rises (Marketing Forecast):  A study from Kellog states most senior managers at companies with $400M+ marketing budgets are not using business cases or ROI to make funding decisions. These executives are relying on their gut instincts because they lack analysts to track the data and don’t have a handle on LTV/NPV/ROI. This is a tough challenge for online marketers, particularly when many CMOs had their instincts honed in an age when the online channel didn’t exist!
4. Ad Dollars Go Digital (Fast Company): Excellent graphic, though we assume that’s a typo on the mobile forecast (nobody thinks it’s going down!)

Share comments about what you read this week or email us at razorfishsearch@razorfish.com