Is SEMPO Dead? SMA-NA Says You're Fired!

There's a new kid on the North American search engine marketing block and it's has a target painted on the back of SEMPO. Several folks are talking about the story.

From

MediaPost

"One of the problems that I saw with SEMPO is that although they state that they have the goal of representing the industry as a whole, in reality it turned out to be representing the big names..." Ian McAnerin [Member of SMA-NA]

"SEMPO spokesman Greg Jarboe responded to these criticisms, saying that his organization does in fact represent the entire spectrum of search engine professionals, from the largest marketing companies to the smallest one-man operations." -Greg Jarboe

From

Search Engine Lowdown

" I think that gives SEMPO too much credit. We're the largest SEM in the world and they don't even come close to representing our interests. " Andy Beal

From

ThreadWatch

"Hot(ish) on the heels of SMA-UK and SMA-EU comes SMA-NA. The initial
presidency will be filled by the aforementioned Ian McAnerin who is currently recruiting from the pools of Search Marketing Fora mods and admins. Im not certain that's a good way to go, but as DUMPO have continously failed the industry and show no signs of change I'll not slate it for the time being heh... Among interested parties so far are
Christine Churchill
who recently resigned from SEMPO and was one of the founding members. The new org is also getting heavy-weight support from the UK side in the shape of
Mike Grehan
and others." -Nick W [Threadwatch founder]

As you can see there's a lot of controversy about SEMPO and the new organization but it's all a good sign that things are correcting themselves.