India Search Engine Marketing currently worth $50 million

Contentsutra.com passes on a report on the size of India's search engine marketing market. Of the reported Rs2.3 billion (US$50 million) targeted at India's web users, only about one-third is currently spent by Indian companies, the report says.

That represents 0.5% of the $10 billion SEM market and is spread over 40,000 marketers - an average spend of just $1,250 as far as I can see. I'm not sure whether to regard this as good news (presumably it's growing fast) or a bit depressing (pie still very small and carved up by thousands of tiny players).