Michael Bonfils was one of the early pioneers in the search engine industry. Starting in 1996, he worked in-house for a multinational firm; in 2000-01, he was in charge of search engine strategy at Business.com. In 2001, he opened up his own firm and an office in Asia after recognizing that US-based online marketing agencies needed outsourced solutions to providing services to their clients outside of the United States. As the demand for his company’s services expanded into other countries, he spread out further into Asia, Europe, and eventually Latin America. Today, SEM International (a subsidiary of International Media Management Corporation) is part of Webcertain, providing search agencies and clients with a one-stop, centralized solution for international search engine marketing.