Speaking Sensis

This week Sensis and Telstra launched Whereis Navigator Traffic – a new service that will no doubt be music to the ears of Australian motorists.

Ever turned a corner only to find the traffic is banked up for kilometres, and it”’’s too late to change directions? Well, the new Whereis Navigator traffic service helps drivers choose the best route to their destination by re-directing them around high-impact traffic incidents.

So what does the launch of the new Whereis Navigator Traffic mean for me?

1. I can now avoid serious traffic jams and find my way around major traffic incidents more easily.
2. I can get to my destination more quickly
3. I don’t get stuck in traffic jams which means I don’t waste sitting in my car
4. I can keep my eyes on the road whilst I am automatically re-routed around high-impact traffic incidents, meaning a hassle-free driving experience.

So it appears this new feature has the ability to make my life easier, quicker and hassle free – now that’s my kind of thing!

The feeds of traffic information come from Australian Traffic Network (ATN) too, the same group that provide traffic reports to radio and television news stations daily via ABC and Austereo radio stations or on programs like Channel 7’s Sunrise.

The info is updated by ATN every 5 minutes and they collect data from a number of reliable sources- not just standard from road authorities but from helicopter feeds and from people like you and I.

Now that’s what I call handy. Available on selected Telstra GPS enabled phones. Whereis Navigator is like a GPS device in my pocket!

http://www.trafficnet.com.au

http://telstra.com.au/mobile/nextg/whereis_navigator.html

AIMIA Victoria’s View 21 forum was held yesterday at a Docklands venue in Melbourne. The event was titled “The New Business of Media” and produced a diverse line-up of speakers from Apple, ABC online, Hyro, Sensis, IBM and a sound and lighting extraordinaire responsible for some of the biggest music concerts in the world.

The day kicked off with a keynote from former Global Creative Director of Apple, Samy Davy, who gave an insightful (although not unpredictable) glimpse into the importance Apple places on educating consumers about their products. He went on to attribute the success of the iPhone launch to the way they educated consumers in the 6 month lead up to the launch. TV commercials and 30 minute videos on mac.com were a complete success. With 90% of the population using only 10% of the features on their mobile, he said Apple places education at the forefront of all marketing activity.

Speaking on the first panel of the day, participants from IBM, Hyro and Sensis took on the topic of New business – not new media. The panel discussed businesses needing to move from product-based initiatives to providing customers with media solutions.

“The focus should be on providing consumers with information when and where they need it, and providing advertisers with simple solutions that meet their needs,” said Amanda Brook of Sensis.

The solution to fragmented media consumption is integration. It’s about giving consumers more ways to access information, and giving advertisers more ways to talk to their consumers.

When asked if 2009 was the year of mobile, Amanda said that after five years in the mobile business, Sensis believed mobile was definitely here to stay.

You can read more about V21 in this Digital Media article.

My last couple of entries have looked back on 2008.’s

Now it’s time to turn from past to future, with eight trends for 2009.

It’s a testing time for the media sector today. But despite the impacts of the economic downturn, there’s a lot to be optimistic about. The key will be focusing on customer needs and listening to what your customers are saying to you.

Which is why we’ve dubbed 2009 ‘the year of the customer’.

Have a read and tell us what you think. Do you agree… or not? What do you think this year’s hot spots will be and why?

Mobiles make mainstream

Mobile advertising has been promising big things for years. Now it’s delivering and, this year, mobile advertising will make the mainstream.

I could spend hours talking about the unique capabilities mobiles offer marketers (and I will do soon), but, for now, let’s talk numbers.

From January 08 to January 09, traffic to Sensis Mobile sites grew on average 12% A MONTH . Mobile now represents 8% of Sensis’ total Australian digital traffic – and it’s growing fast(1) .

And, according to MediaSmart (Sensis’ digital display advertising business), the uptake of mobile display campaigns is currently running at almost three times the rate it did last year.

Think mobile advertising is a way off? Think again.

Integration

The marketing challenges created by fragmentation (people spreading their media consumption) has been a hot topic for years.

In 2009, we’ll turn our attention from the problem to the solution – integration, multi-channel, cross-platform or whatever you choose to call it.

Increasingly, media companies will bundle different media into multi-brand, multi-product networks. This way, advertisers can access a larger base of consumers with a single purchase and manage their media strategy in a co-ordinated way.

Sensis has been executing on this for a while through our Yellow Pages® print, online, voice, mobile and sat nav network. We”re also seeing strong traction for cross platform advertising in the activities of a number of major media players, including the Mitchell Communication Group’’s cross-platform media negotiations, which received considerable media coverage late last year.

Expect integrated campaigns to steadily become the norm.

Syndication

Okay. So, major media providers are increasingly enabling cross-platform advertising. But what about the web itself? After all, it isn’t just one platform, it’s millions. About 108 million at best guess(2). How can you possibly reach out across such a diverse landscape?

In the past, going online meant having a web site and not much more. This year will see more marketers stepping outside their web sites to create syndicated content that windows that reach out right across the web.

Today, advertisers are increasingly using blog, video and even Powerpoint networks like LiveJournal, Wordpress, YouTube and Slideshare to generate and deliver content. They’re using a blinding array of sharing and syndication tools to spread that content everywhere. And the whole lot is search engine optimised, including their Yellow Pages® and White Pages® listings.

The end result is an easy to manage content store streaming content out to a whole mass of proprietary and public sites. You’re heavily increasing potential reach and enabling a whole range of different opportunities, like the ability for people to discuss, share or subscribe to your content.

No doubt about it, there’s more work in this than the old model. But the spin-offs are potentially huge, which is why you‘ll see far more syndication occurring in the future.

Social Media

While we’re on the subject, there’s no doubt that social media is the hot topic right now.

And it’s likely to stay that way. YouTube and Facebook usage continues to grow at almost obscene rates. According to Roy Morgan, over 5.5m Australians used these two sites every month in the September quarter last year – up 1.8m on the previous year(3).

Meanwhile, Coca Cola’s Facebook page now has over 3 million fans !(4)

So social media is a big potential opportunity. But how do you unlock it?

The exciting thing about social media this year won’t just be its growth. It will be the fact that marketers will work out how to use it.

Engagement versus eyeballs

But, to do that, there’ll need to be a major (and very welcome) shift in how we perceive the role of marketing.

Will marketers get value out of social media by using it as another way of shoving brands in people’s faces?

No. They’ll drive value by using social (and other) media to genuinely engage people in conversations and learn from their views. They’ll use media as a channel to provide service – not just taglines – to consumers. They’ll begin sharing, rather than just promoting, their brands and they’ll use media to go right to the source: seeking consumer views on everything from product development to customer service to community relations.

Make no mistake. This is a quantum shift. As a result, brand awareness will start giving way to brand ownership and the role marketing plays in the business will change forever.

Accountability

Here’s a disturbing irony. While digital media is touted as highly accountable, a lack of accountability is still seen as the greatest roadblock by online advertisers. For example, a 2007 McKinsey survey(5) found that over 50% of digital advertisers nominated “insufficient metrics to measure impact” as a barrier to adoption.

The IAB is currently undertaking a much welcomed revision of online measurement guidelines and industry standardisation.

Let’s hope the many issues confronting online measurement can be resolved, including the ability to align online metrics with other media and the ability to measure the rapidly growing mobile landscape in a standardised way.

Of course, accountability doesn’t apply solely to online. Traditional media need to become more transparent about ROI as well. One example of how Sensis is following through with this is our Yellow Pages® metered ads. Unique phone numbers are used on Yellow Pages® ads and then monitored. In this way, the advertiser can see exactly how many calls their ad is generating.

Advertisers have been demanding accountability for some time now. Over the next year, you’ll start to see media providers – both online and offline – start to really deliver it.

Tough times

So there’s a lot of exciting things going on today. But you can’t realistically talk about 2009 without mentioning the global downturn and it’s impact on media.

In Australia, the Sensis Business Index and Sensis Consumer Report are reflecting global trends by finding the lowest levels of consumer and business confidence in their history.

This declining confidence has had a sobering impact on advertising and media.

Almost every major Australian media business is staring at falling revenue, although it’s pleasing for us that Sensis has been a notable exception.

And even the major dot.com high flyers are experiencing either curbed growth or revenue declines.

There is a feeling that things will improve for the industry in 2010, although recent downward revisions in forecasts from various analysts suggest we may not yet be at the bottom of this cycle.

The year of the customer

And this leads me to the final trend. 2009 will be the year of the customer.

Over the last few years, the industry has been beset by discussions about systemic changes. Is traditional giving way to digital? Are advertising business models changing?

These discussions, while vital, have tended to divert the industry’s attention away from the most fundamental and vital question of all – are we delivering what our customers (both consumers and advertisers) want?

Whether they’re traditional, digital or both, the companies that survive and thrive through this downturn will all have one thing in common.

They’ll be focused unerringly on the needs of their customers.

1: Omniture. Visits to Sensis sites. January 2008 to January 2009.
2: www.domaintools.com
3: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia. October 2007 to September 2008. Base Australians 14+.
4: Facebook
5: How Companies are Marketing Online – A McKinsey Global Survey. September 2007.

Company reporting season is a bit like report time at school. It’s a time to look back and assess whether you’ve achieved what you set out to do.

For most businesses, there’s ultimately two questions that really matter:

Did we deliver sustainable growth for investors?

Did we deliver for our customers? In Sensis’ case, that means have we improved the customer experience for Australian buyers and sellers?

Telstra’s recent financial results announcement answered the first question. It’s now time to consider the second.

So here’s a partial list of the initiatives Sensis has been working on and what they mean for our customers – Australian buyers and sellers.

Buyers can now find Yellow Pages® and White Pages® listings on major search engines. This initiative makes it easier for buyers to find local businesses while adding over one million extra searches for our advertisers every month(1) .

You can search new enhanced content in Yellow Pages® OnLine, including improved in-ad logos, attachments, photo galleries and video (which is currently on trial in Queensland).

White Pages® OnLine users can also enjoy vastly improved search capabilities and more detailed information. This has led to an 80% fall in failed searches on White Pages® OnLine(2) and a 13% rise in user satisfaction(3).

And you can use a whole host of simple new ways to take your local search experience on the road with you:

• Launch of the first Yellow™ In The Car directory, which is now in nine markets;
• Providing Yellow™ Mobile results links as an SMS to 1234 users – over 3.5m SMS links have been sent already;
• Send to mobile and send to GPS capabilities in Yellow Pages® OnLine and Whereis.com.au. These services have been used over 500,000 times in their first few months;
• And we have begun placing Mobile Codes in Yellow Pages® directories so you can transfer your print experience to mobile with one click. The first Mobile code included in the Yellow Pages® directory was for BigPond in Adelaide – followed by Foxtel in Sydney and Camera Action in Melbourne.

You can find helpful new content in the Yellow Pages® print directories, including local maps, public transport routes, a city attraction map and handy hints for new movers.

We’ve also been working with Yellow Pages® advertisers to help them improve the effectiveness and value of their advertising:

• Building out our local office network, beginning with Geelong in Victoria;
• Instituting sales continuity so advertisers can begin building a long-term relationship with their rep;
• Providing coaching in ‘info-rich’ effective advertising principles. We’ve conducted extensive research into what works in Yellow Pages® advertising, begun conducting seminars and placed 85 info-rich trained designers all over Australia.
• We’ve also set up over 7,000 metered ads for customers around Australia. These help advertisers determine exactly how many calls their ads are generating.
• And, Yellow Pages® listings will soon be available in Google Maps due to our recent agreement with Google.

At the same time, buyers can now search Google listings on an Australian search engine – sensis.com.au.

You can now support the environment by purchasing the Green UBD® street directories in Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide.

The latest Whereis® satellite navigation maps have had almost 117,000km of road data added or improved and also include new features such as 3D city models for Melbourne and Sydney, junction views and 3D landmarks.

And Whereis.com.au locator buttons have been added. These provide one click access to popular landmarks, such as shopping centres, shopping centres, supermarkets, beaches, car parks, dog parks, libraries, police stations, ATMS, take away outlets and many other popular landmarks.

Australians can bid, buy and sell using the auction facilities at Trading Post® Online. And the new Trading Post® Mobile site has been a particularly big hit, with usage growing five times since we launched it in November(4).

Of course, we’ve been busy in China too. We achieved our target of making Soufun available in 100 Chinese cities and maintained Soufun as the number one real estate site in China.

And we’re now also number one and two respectively in the Chinese online auto and consumer electronics markets thanks to recent acquisitions.

So there’s some of the highlights for the last six months. Certainly not everything we’ve achieved, but I hope enough to demonstrate that we’ve been busy. It certainly feels like I have.

Next time, I’d like to turn my attention forward and ponder some of the big trends we see emerging in the advertising and local search markets.

1. Omniture. Monthly click through data. December quarter 2008.
2. White Pages® OnLine site analytics. October 2008 to January 2009.
3. 2 Degrees Research. White Pages® User Satisfaction Survey, September 2008.
4. Ominture. February 2009 and November 2008.