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"The IPAs desire to be involved in search is a clear indication of the importance of search marketing to agencies and clients. Having worked at Espotting in the days when nobody had heard of PPC and some search agencies made obvious mistakes, its great to see the industry has matured to this stage and is valued alongside more established advertising channels" commented Tony Samios, Steak Media's COO. Tony was one of the management team that launched paid search engine Espotting (now part of Miva) back in 2000. Espotting was valued at $170m upon sale.

The IPA is the industry body and professional institute for UK advertising, media and marketing communications agencies, established in 1917. The IPA initiative sits beside the IAB Search Council(which Tony Samios also sits on and the IPA works with) and Search Engine trade body SEMPO (Steak Media is a member of all three industry bodies).

This sort of initiative can only help the industry mature and represent itself to the search engines, advertisers and the press. The weight of the IPA behind this is significant alongside the IAB - the IPA has decades of experienced as a trade body.

The first announcement from the IPA Search Group concerns trademark protection and the best practice recommendations can be summarised as:

• Submit trademark requests with the search engines while explaining to clients that protections are limited.
• Implement contractual warranties for affiliate programmes, with clear guidance on which keywords they may bid upon, and which they cannot, what message they may use and the quality of destination content required.
• Ensure clients understand the value of a direct sale vs an indirect sale
• Ensure clients understand that a PPC strategy needs to be part of a wider search marketing mix including search engine optimisation, shopping feeds and paid inclusion as appropriate.

The full document is on the IPA site.