AIMIA Connect 2009-Part 2

This is part 2 of the recap of AIMIA Connect 2009

Future of digital advertising

Mike Williams, Interactive Advertising Manager

MCN Connect

Photo by earcos via Creative Commons

Online technology is becoming very fragmented and user media consumption behaviour is changing from year to year, offering many different opportunities to advertise on a multitude of mediums.
Some interesting online video facts:
• UK Internet traffic to video websites up to 40.7% in a year and 1 in 35 Internet visits is to a dedicated video site
• In Australia, video viewing time on PCs has increased from 2.5 hours/week in 2007 to 4.6 hours in 2008
• In the US in 2008 99% of video viewing was done through the TV; YouTube, Hulu, iPhone and all other web and mobile phone media combined accounted for less than 1% of total video viewing [Amazing! – Kate]
• In 1995, there were 225 shows across British television that delivered audiences of more than 15 million. By 2005 there was none, this shows the extreme fragmentation taking place.
The new mantra is create once, publish often. This should be done through interactive TV advertising, which drives sales leads and can be used as a brand building activity. Enhanced TV can offer the viewer interesting tips and facts whilst still watching the shows. Personal Digital Recorders (PDRs) change the TV landscapes and does not ( as is the common view) eliminate TV ads, in fact, when a household obtains a PDR, television watched within the household is increased by 17%, in essence, 4% more live ads are shown . PDR’s allow video on demand advertising, which entails reaching people when they are interested.
Addressable ads are the next frontier where ads can be tailored to the market, i.e. dog food ads to households with dogs. When TV + online ads are used together, the average uplift across all brand metrics for all tested categories was 18%. Purchase consideration was raised an average of 21% points, by exposure to both TV + online ads.
In summary, measurement and accountability will become vital with new measurement tools and techniques becoming available. Let the idea lead the medium while the same rules apply – content is still king. Need to advertise to where the eyeballs are and where the opportunity exists to make ads more targeted and more accountable.

A New approach to online news

Richard Slatter, GM

Wotnews.com.au

Richard starts his talk about the different approach to news that wotnews.com.au takes and how they won the AIMIA news and reference prize. They were the complete underdog and managed to come out on top. There is a shift going on within the news industry.
Wotnews.com.au is a news search engine that uses semantic search to analyse aggregate and organise the news. They are expanding into the UK and the US. News comes from so many diverse sources and their mandate is to try to bring the relevant news to the right audience.
Print media is on the decline, advertising and audiences are connecting elsewhere; traditional publishers no longer own the agenda. Hyper local news is now a possibility where you can get news on a neighbourhood based level. Citizen journalism on sites such as topix is experiencing a massive growth. Wotnews mines the news for business intelligence to track, monitor and understand what is going on in the world today. [The citizen journalism website on youtube is really cool too, check it out if you have not already – Kate]

In summary, people are reading more news than ever before, systems are consuming more news than ever while people are interacting with the news more than ever before. Rapid media innovation is everywhere and media organisations are being forced to innovate and improve.

A global and local view of the online video and internet broadcasting industry

Nick Bolton, Head of Sales & Marketing

Viocorp

3 billion videos are watched online every day, in 1 minute you can learn so much more from video than you can from a picture and text. The average US home will consume over 1 terabyte of digital content per month by 2010. This is because every plasma TV is the US is sold with Ethernet and internet connections and as a result of this newspapers are in big trouble, 2 major cities in the US already don’t have a major newspaper.
4 different on-line video business models
1. Free-You tube
Free to view, advertising supported, its content is generally short, it’s tough to monetise and control.
2. Corporate-Viocorp, governments etc
Content viewers won’t pay for this content, content owners will pay to have content delivered, mostly corporate, governments and sports clubs are involved in this, very good for brand building.
3. Premium-Sydney Opera House
Niche content, content is more easily monetised i.e. viewers are prepared to pay for content.
4. Broadcasters-ABC, Seven etc
Multiple revenue sources, probably a traditional broadcast model sitting behind this.
Viocorp has had previous success with various clients, using video to reach millions of people on the web, the clients profiled were:
• Tourism Queensland
• Palm Sunday Mass
• QBE
• CyclingMasters.tv
• Obama’s inauguration
• March Madness
Hulu, BBC, ABC and Facebook are the current leaders in this field. The future is HD, however bandwidth and processing power are major issues. Main tech landscape is dominated by Adobe, Microsoft, Akami and Boxee. Challenges are infrastructure, behavioural and cultural.

Photo by William Hook via Creative Commons

EA Mobile Case study

Anton Sher, Director

Front Foot Media

Front Foot has successfully created and managed some of the most successful mobile content products and services in Australia. Front Foot’s mobile technology is featured in the Australian Technology Showcase. The case study that Anton presented was regarding the relationship between Front Foot and the electronic game maker Electronic Arts.
Front Foot had several objectives while working with EA, including:
• Direct?to?consumer destination
• Customer insight & relationship
• Integrate with other sales and marketing departments
• Focus on mass?market mobile handsets
• Generate revenue
To reach these objectives several elements of the gaming market needed to be understood including:
• What do we already know?
• What do we want to know?
• Would existing and new customers use it?
• Would we use it?
A complete mobile solution was developed and included the following elements:
• Content management
• Content vending
• Mobile payments
• Integration across EA business
• Reporting
It seems the close relationship that was formed between Front foot an EA resulted in a solid and effective product that was marketed, sold and backed up with expertise and ultimately garnered success.

Mobile – More Consumers, more Response

Jennifer Wilson, Chair

AIMIA Mobile industry Group

Some great stats were announced by Jennifer, many of these figures are taken from industry reports while some were best guesses from some very smart people:
• 23.2m mobile handsets in Australia (111.4% penetration)
• 3G handsets in Australia – est. 9m
• 30m iPhone sold world-wide (25m 3G)
• iPhone represents about 1.5% of all handsets Worldwide
• 650,000 iPhones in Australia
• Mobile internet use (Australia) : 5m active monthly users
• Telstra 2.3m; Optus 0.6m; Vodafone 0.5m; Hutchison/3 Mobile 1.6m
Key reasons to go mobile:
• Responded to very quickly (96% SMS read in <20 mins) • On 24 x 7, nearby and accessed often • Response to mobile advertising incredible: • 3% - 7% response rate • 10% - 20% conversation rate • 6 times the ROI on mobile compared to other forms Audience Measurement:
• On TV, the total audience data that can be captured is 1%
• On the web, the audience data that can be captured is 10%
• On mobile, the audience data that can be captured is 90%
If you are a brand:
• Mobile is a consumer touch point, not just an advertising or marketing channel
• Consumers will expect to transact through this channel
If you are a marketer:
• Use mobile as part of you strategy (integrated with others)
• If you want to do something new/different – mobile can help
• Consumers are sophisticated – clever concepts are better
If you are an advertiser:
• Be patient. The market is coming (and can be counted)
• Be aware of the context. Popular might not be appropriate
In summary mobile is the ultimate interactive media consumer device – in your pocket.
Part 3 of the AIMIA Connect 2009 recap will follow on Friday.

See Bruce's author page for links to connect on social media.