Investment in search by large Australiancompanies will see new Australian launch Iprospect’s revenue grow by 80% this year, its chief executive David Holmes has claimed.
Holmes said that there are still “missed opportunities” for top-tier companies as the search market is still underserved by search agencies in Australia. While the major competition will come from the WPP-owned 24/7 Real Media, large clients are often unwilling to work with small agencies, and this is where Iprospect can hit a gap in the market, Holmes added.
The company is aiming to gather 10% search market share by the end of the year, rising up from its figure somewhere below 5% at present.
Search will grow in triple figures over the next few years as companies adopt the medium more to drive sales, the Iprospect boss predicted.
“It goes without saying that with 400% growth over the next four years, that’s not happening organically it’s because opportunities are being missed at the moment,” Holmes said.
Robbie Hills, managing director of 24/7 Real Media, said that while categories such as finance, telcos and automotive were already experienced in search “there are plenty of companies in the top 100 or 200 who are not using it as much as they should be”.
He added: “Half of my job is to educate the market in the opportunities with search.”
Aegis-owned Iprospect is a global search marketing agency that was launched in Australia in August taking staff from sister agency One Digital, including Holmes to head the company. It has now started migrating search clients from the One Digital business to the Iprospect team who have undergone specialist search training at the “Iprospect University” either in Boston or Munich.
The Iprospect brand was brought to Australia so search growth here could be part of global “discussions in Silicon Valley, London and the Asia-Pacific hubs” Holmes added. It offers paid search, web analytics, search engine optimisation and search PR, a growing area which looks at the how press coverage affects search rankings.
As well as driving business its aim is to educate marketers about the relationship between search and other forms of marketing. Iprosect in the US just released a report entitled Offline Channel Influence on Online Search Behaviour, which makes claims such as “two-thirds of online search users are driven to perform searches as a result of exposure to some offline channel”.
Holmes said that the introduction of Iprospect here would help search engines like Google grow revenue, although their target was to keep client’s search costs as little as possible for maximum effectiveness.
