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This is huge news, a professional organization of Search Marketers, will be ringing the bell at NASDAQ on December 1st, 2008. The organization is called SEMPO, Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, started around 2002. From their site they say their mission is: 

SEMPO is a global non-profit organization serving the search engine marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it.

Okay, back to the ‘big news’, this news wasn’t and still isn’t on their website. :O But they posted on the ‘wall’ on their Facebook group. Below is an image of the post and then a text version of it.

sempo rings nasdaq bell 300x178 SEMPO will ring the opening bell at NASDAQ on Dec. 1st, 2008

From SEMPO’s facebook group, wall.  ”Dave Williams (Atlanta, GA) wrote

at 4:33pm yesterday
November 25, 2008   SEMPO has been invited to ring the opening bell at NASDAQ on Monday, December 1, 2008! 

SEMPO was recognized by NASDAQ as being highly influential in the tech community, and you have the opportunity to be there on this historic day. Our chairperson, Dana Todd will be on hand to represent SEMPO at the opening, and would love to have local members join us for this exciting event.

We have a limited number of slots to fill, but are hoping that you will respond quickly to this note and are able to join us.

Please RSVP by 5p.m. on Wednesday – November 25, directly to Paula Hunter if you are able to attend. We will confirm location and time to you when we receive your response.

If you are not able to join us, rest assured we will have plenty of video of the event, and will post it on our web site next week.

For questions about the event, please contact Paula Hunter at phunter@sempo.org. ”

In addition to this, more information has been updated about SEMPO’s bell ringing on SearchEngineLand. The President Jeffrey Pruitt of SEMPO said “we felt the timing was perfect. With the current economy struggling, and advertisers cutting expenditures on traditional media, now is the time to proclaim that search is the most efficient performance media in history.”

In Conclusion

This is very big news. Why? Because as Jeff said ‘time to proclaim that search is the most efficient performance media in history‘. Internet marketing is only 7.1% of all advertising and ’search marketing’ specifically is only 2.9% of all advertising (according to ComScore, 2007). With that said, I’ve seen about 3 different studies from research companies (I don’t remember the names, sorry!) that have said ‘Search Advertising (PPC & SEO) is 5 times more effective than any traditional advertising’. 

It’s very big because now SEO/PPC will have more exposure than it did before and leans to a turn in online and search marketing. This is exciting for us here at Refuge Design and I believe exciting news for our entire industry.