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SearchCamp is a two day event aimed to bring together the best minds from the Search Engine Marketing space to talk about search engine advertising, including optimization and marketing issues. This event is the first of its kind in India and will feature workshops, debates and keynotes on the present state and evolution of Search Engine Marketing.

Iam(Chetan Patel) right now at Search Camp giving you the live updates at the meet, which is held on 6th & 7th of October 2007, at the Main Auditorium, Tidel Park, Chennai.

Speech 1 by SEOguru - http://www.searchengine-optimization-guru.com/
Prabuddha S. Raychaudhuri, CEO

He gave a speech on Search marketing and mainly focussed on Tracking phone calls from SE referrals.

Speech 2 by Geroge Tai, Obamboo Inc - http://www.obamboo.com/
He is a magazine publisher and gave a speech on Keyword marketing.
Mainly focussed to discourage Indian SEO companies targeting that there is no SEO company from India that is listed in NASDAQ.
There was a good debate going on as one of the participant claimed that there are a few companies that have made it into the list of UK’s best big companies. And NASDAQ isn’t the holy grail of all the large lists of SEO companies.

Speech 3 - The future of search engine marketing - 8 predictions for 2008 - Mahesh Murthy, Founder & CEO, Pinstorm, Bombay
http://www.pinstorm.com/
He pointed out 8 predictions that might happen in the advanced world of internet in 2008.
1. The internet marketing and traffic world wouldn’t be only by searches.
2. Google wouldn’t be the only biggest search tool. And it’s monopoly will not last long, will be faded away probably.
3. SERP ranking formulae will be broken. And the advertiser would not expect only the top position in Search engine results, but they will expect the organic traffic.
4. World in internet would probably change into “Pay for performance” type of advertising.
5. Pay for performance will be extending into other media, and the advertisers mostly would see for a better branding impact. And would expect CPA and CPI expectations from sources such as TV’s, Radios, Prints etc.
Google and other big brands and marketers would start buying/selling traditional media. This would show that the media is evolving from small media to the larger companies. The large digi firms will finally hire TV’s etc. for advertising purposes.
6. Advertising would be entirely global. And an advertiser would not expect a single place campaign, would rather expect global campaigns.
7. Advertising will be democratize. An advertiser who is paying $5k for advertising would expect some type of branding that brings levels of about $5m.
And so the big guys aren’t expected to last long.
Systems like “For dummies cross engines” might probably evolve, which would be otherwise called Instant marketing.
8. India might be the biggest Hub and center for the world’s marketing trades. And after IT, digimarketing would be off shored.
And indications are already seen, as about 1300 employees of Google Adwords are already Indians and working from India.

Speech 4 by Rajiv bala, founder of Predator Digital.
His topic was on “Strategic consulting opportunities in Search”
He focussed on Media exchange programs. And he introduced a term, unfamiliar to me - OTS(Opportunity to See) which is also named as “Spray and Pray” which focusses on non-IP enabled devices like newspapers for advertising.
About $20 billion is invested by Advertisers in AVMC’s like google etc. and about $480 billion in OTS like TV’s and other ads. But still the value of advertising analyzed is better for Google than OTS.

Then there was a big speech and debate on Web analytics management and other things related to Web analytics, which i would be updating when everything finishes in the night.
This was the program till mid of the day i.e. Lunch. I will try to keep you updated on more once our next session is completed.
Chetan Patel