Netizen questions need for IPA Search Group

Edited by the Marketingservicestalk editorial team Jan 30, 2008

The IPA launched a Search Group on 24 January, 2008 with an 'action-orientated agenda' to help the search marketing sector mature.

The IPA Search Group issued agency recommendations to help guard against the misuse of client trademarks in search engine marketing and to push search engines for greater clarity, increased and more efficient service levels and greater protections.

Lewis Lenssen, managing director of Netizen, remains cynical about the need for an IPA Search Group at all, but especially one of this design.

Lenssen commented: "Keep your enemies close by all means, but you have to question the logic and motives of competitors who form a group to spearhead improvements for all of their businesses.

"If it was led by a group of advertisers I could understand; you have to question the motivations of an alliance that will be seen to offer commanding advice to others in its industry sector - the only agencies this will help are those who haven't invested in search themselves.

"The industry would do better to have a user group built bottom-up from the customer base rather than a group of large media-buying organisations dabbling in search.

"Transparency is vital and surely best practice will be defined my common competitiveness.

"In our experience as a search specialist, agencies absolutely need to understand the issues of trademarking - but they shouldn't need to be part of a 'Search Group' to understand these fundamentals.

"If search agencies needs to be part of a search committee to understand these key issues, then perhaps we should question their abilities".

Netizen is a search marketing and web development agency which specialises in pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimisation (SEO).

It offers both fully managed and consultancy services across a range of sectors including travel, recruitment, property, financial services and retail.

Netizen's services are entirely focussed on generating profitable business for its customers through the web.