OnlineSpin: Boot-strap or Wedgie: Paid Search
Jim Meskauskas points out in an OnlineSpin article that, while many planners are plowing ever-greater proportions of their media budgets into paid search, this may come back to bite them.
Search site users seem not to understand that some links they click are paid placements, and this ignorance may be both responsible for some of today's success and a nasty backlash tomorrow. Also, as clients begin to grasp how profitable paid search spending can be, the finite supply of listings is bid up to potentially unprofitable heights. Another problem, hinted in the column, is that some agencies are now seeing a great proportion of their billings, staffing and other resources thrown into the modern-day equivalent of yellow pages advertising - not the sort of rousing projects that develop amazing creative and media planning resources.
