Search engine marketing spend in North America totaled $9.45 billion in 2006 - the bulk of it for paid search advertising, writes MediaPost, citing data from the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization's "The State of Search Engine Marketing 2006" report.

Paid search spending, mainly for pay-per-click advertising, totaled approximately $8 billion, or 86 percent of search marketing spend, according to SEMPO. Spending on organic search - search engine optimization - totaled $1.1 billion, or 12 percent of spend.

Some 76 percent of surveyed advertisers said they used SEO; 71 percent said they used paid search. A whopping 96 percent said they have used Google (AdWords) for PPC advertising; Yahoo, 86 percent; MSN, 68 percent.

Respondents who said they had shifted budget to search did so from print magazine advertising (20 percent said so), direct mail (16 percent), website development (15 percent), TV ads (13 percent) and print newspaper ads (13 percent).