Sensis on the soapbox
Wayne | 15 September 2008
Life’s pretty busy on the public speaking front at the moment.
On the 10th September, Sandeep Baruah, Group Manager Online Search, shared the stage at the 4th Annual Australian Interactive Media Industry Association Digital Media Summit.
Sandeep participated in the panel ‘Online advertising: Beyond the click’, together with Tony Surtees of iPrime, Emily Baxter of CNET Australia and Michael Lane of Facilitate Digital. Together, the group explored key questions relating to the accountability and measurement of online advertising. In the end their discussion centred on two main themes:
Are we going far enough by measuring clicks? The general view was that measuring clicks wasn’t enough. As Sandeep mentioned, 80% of sales comes from 20% of keywords, so you need to be able to track all the way down to the sale to really understand what you’re audience is doing and how you can optimise the impact of your spend.
The need for multi-channel advertising. There is a growing bank of data (Tony Surtees presented some on the day) to show that online advertising works best when it’s part of an integrated program.
On Wednesday 17th, Rachel De Sain, who is the Strategy & Commercial Manager for Sensis Mobile, will speak at the iMedia Brand Summit in the Blue Mountains. She’ll provide insights into mobile advertising trends and how and why you should integrate mobile into your existing advertising. Rachel will also preview emerging mobile technologies, including Telstra Mobile Codes.
And on the same day (US time), Geoff Avard, who is GM, Sensis Strategy, will be in Atlanta to visit and speak at the Kelsey Group’s Directional Media Strategies 2008 conference. Geoff is participating in a panel to discuss ‘The Change Imperative’ – the opportunities and challenges for Yellow Pages businesses in the rapidly evolving world of multi-channel advertising. Geoff will be swapping views with Ken Ray of AT&T Publishing & Advertising, Perry Evans of Local Matters, Sebastien Provencher of Praized Media and Neal Polachek and Charles Laughlin of The Kelsey Group.
If you’d like to read Sensis past industry presentations, you can find them at the presentations page on the Sensis web site.
Call it what you want - multi-channel, cross platform, integrated
ar | 1 October 2008Call it what you want – multi-channel, cross platform, integrated opportunities – it’s important to remember that the more deliverables you spread across, the more reach you give your advertisers and the more chance of things not working properly (if not researched properly, but rather just a ‘everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t we?’ kind of thing).
Online advertising is still young compared to the traditional media deliverables, so it makes sense to incorporate the spend across different outlets that will have an online arm.
It’s also important to research the validity of social media aspects of this, as sometimes they’re not appropriate (which is a blog within itself). Sure, it’s a great and, most times, free tool to use, but it can be seen as a bandwagon approach (and it’s not as effective any more, considering the use of ringtones pages, info ads, etc on sites).
My couple of cents.