Speaking Sensis

I was lucky enough last month to join a panel of talented digital media practitioners at the AIMIA Future of Digital summit in Sydney. With delegates arriving for insight into the future of digital advertising, the conversation on stage and audience covered key issues, views and trends emerging from our great industry.
 
Opportunities abound for folks working in the digital advertising industry to re-write the marketing rule book as digital advertising prepares for a wave of technological change not seen since the dot.com boom.

But before we get carried away with what the future holds, we need to ask ourselves whether we are we ready to take advantage of these opportunities?

It has been 16 years since the world wide web escaped the university environment in Australia with the creation of the first commercial ISPs, connect.com and Ozemail. And while this digital teenager has come a long way, its growth during the next two years will eclipse its achievements to date. By then we’ll have an 18 year old on our hands, a grown-up. But will we be ready to handle it?

In my opinion the technological cusp on which we’re perched will soon reveal exciting new areas of technology that will touch each and every one of us and I’m keen to discuss a few of these areas in my coming blogs:

•  The digital home

• Mobility

• Content

• Point of sale

Let’s touch on the ‘digital home’ as a key area to watch.

With the evolution of the digital home opening up living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms across the world, we’ll see more content and rich information accessed than ever. Obviously huge opportunities exist for advertisers to get right to the heart of it. 

What to watch out for:

• IPTV will take off which enables catch up TV, information and interaction. Basically, TV as we know it today will become just one of many applications on the jumbo-screen computer in our living rooms.

• 3DTV: The big hitter at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in LA and you won’t even need to wear those dorky 3D glasses like we all did to see Avatar and Up to experience 3D TV. Panasonic actually launched the first 3D TV this week in New York, so the wheels are definitely in motion.

• Devices like Telstra’s T-Hub will be launched. A simple flat panel touch screen that sits in your kitchen or study – wherever you have the home phone – Telstra’s T-Hub is like a smartphone in your home. Using T-Hub, you’ll be able to do things like send SMS’s, use social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, manage your calendar and contacts, browse sites like BigPond or Yellow Pages, listen to Internet radio, use it as a digital photo frame all from the comfort of your own kitchen or lounge room. You’ll even be able to make phone calls.

I’ll go into mobility next month, with advances in targeting already happening today it’ll be one to watch. So watch this space.

With the 16th Annual AIMIA Awards fast approaching, voting has opened for the all new People’s Choice Award.  The People’s Choice category is exactly that – it’s your turn to vote for the finalist you feel deserves to be a winner of their respective category!

The finalist with the most votes wins and the exciting news is, of course, that our very own Yellow Pages® iPhone app is in the running. Get in quick to cast your vote on the digital industry’s brightest creations of the past year. Click on a link to look at the entry and cast a vote for your favourite. There is only one vote per person so make it count! Voting closes at 10.00 AEDT Friday 26 February.

To cast your vote go to:  http://www.aimia.com.au/awards/peoples-choice/

As announced on 3 February, Yellow Pages® is a finalist in the Best Mobile Service or Product Category. I will be frocking up to attend the ‘The Amys’ on Friday 5 March to find out who in the industry will be awarded for their exceptional work (and of course have my fingers crossed for Yellow Pages®). I look forward to seeing many of you there and I will bring you all the news, gossip and pics in the coming weeks.

 To learn more about the AIMIA awards click here http://www.aimia.com.au/isp/icms.isp?page=6636

AT AIMIA’s 7th Future of Digital Advertising last week, Mark Shaw GM of Sensis’ MediaSmart took to the stage and delivered a blow – stating the internet was peaking too early and those working in digital media were too obsessed with beating traditional mediums to become the number one in terms of advertising spend. Mark said rather than fighting to take the top spot in advertising revenue terms, the online industry should instead work more closely with its rivals and in turn help to grow the entire online ad market.

Read more here: http://www.bandt.com.au/news/B0/0C066DB0.asp

Stay tuned, as we will be publishing more information about Mark’’s speech in the coming days.

The AIMIA Digital Summit in Sydney last week included presentations from the likes of BBC, Facebook, Viocorp and Microsoft, research presentations from the Internet Advertising Bureau, Nielsen Online and Research International and case studies from Aussie, Witchery Holdings and Tourism Queensland. To sum up some of the key themes that emerged over the two days… online usage is flattening out but continuing to grow and mobile internet usage is on the up. Companies like Aussie and Witchery Holdings now attribute a significant proportion of their revenue to online retailing.

But, 97% of Australian retail sales are still occurring offline. This highlights the importance of local search services like Yellow Pages, which provide the link between online purchase research and the bricks and mortar supplier.

Jonathon Stinton from Research International explained that with so many channels at the disposal of the consumer and the advertiser, it’s getting harder and harder to determine what the key influencers are over a purchase decision. He calls this the “Twilight Zone of information”. So what are influencers as far as we can tell? Consumers are strongly relying on the web to research retail buying decisions and social media is having a minor but growing impact on this phase of the purchase cycle. With the phenomenal rise in social media traffic, brands want a piece of the action and are exploring ways to tap into this and develop relationships with consumers.

So what should an advertising and media company take away from this? We need to be focused on providing choice to both buyers and sellers – and hence our multichannel strategy. With digital such a major part of many Australians’ search repertoire, Sensis needs to provide the most relevant online and mobile local search experiences possible to bring buyers and sellers together. Speaking on the closing panel, Sensis’ GM of Digital Development Cheryl Vize said this is why Sensis is so proud of innovations like the Yellow iPhone app and why we’re absolutely determined to keep “raising the digital bar”.

One thing seems clearer than ever: there may be no crystal ball, but it’s never been as important as it is now for a business to get the magnifying glass out and really examine the DNA of its target market and what media they are consuming where, when and for what purpose in order to determine how to get the best cut-through.

We’re a pretty tech-savvy population, early adopters of innovation. We don’t treat our handsets as a device any more – it’s a resource, a personal medium. For many, it’s our diary, our music store, it stores all of our secrets – basically, it’s our best friend!

A growing number of advertisers are turning to mobile to supercharge traditional media by targeting campaigns to specific user groups, and adding a stronger response mechanism than they can achieve with any other medium. I’ve recently had the opportunity to speak to a number of industry peers and commentators about whether mobile really is the great marketing enabler, and I think there are three clear reasons why it is.

The mobile internet audience is available and ready.

Currently, over 8 million Australians use a mobile phone connected to a 3G network. New smart phones are precipitating the uptake of mobile usage. Retail analyst group, GFK reports that retail sales of smartphones in Australia grew by 604% in the June quarter while standard mobile handset sales fell by 30%.

The June 2009 Sensis® e-business Report based on a survey of 1,500 Australians revealed that 31% of male mobile users and 26% of female mobile users are accessing the web on their mobiles.

Almost half of all 20-29 year olds have now used mobile internet, while 47% of 14-17 year olds, 34% of 18 to 19 year olds, 33% of those in their 40s and 24% of 50-64 year olds are also surfing the web on their handsets.

As to what Australians are doing with the mobile web:

• 41% use it to look for information on products and services;
• 40% are accessing the mobile web to use social networking sites;
• 36% are using it to find suppliers of products and services;
• 27% are downloading video content;
• 25% are downloading games;
• 25% are doing their banking;
• 17% are watching TV; and
• 12% uploading video content.

The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association’s Mobile Lifestyle Index survey findings which were released this week validated that mobile web browsing is on the rise, with 21 per cent of the 3,710 respondents visiting websites on their mobile phones at least once a day. The report’s author, Dr Marisa Maio Mackay, said accessing the web, video, music and information on mobile phones was now well and truly mainstream, and that Australians are comfortable with mobile phone advertising. Our experience at Sensis certainly bears out these findings.

Mobile reaches buyers and browsers

Mobiles are conducive to search, being with you at all times when you’re out and about looking for products, services and places. This explains why usage of Sensis’ mobile sites including Yellow Pages® Mobile, White Pages® Mobile, Whereis® Mobile, Citysearch® Mobile and Sensis Search has double over the last 12 months to almost 2 million visits a month. When the Yellow Pages® application for iPhone was launched in August, it shot to the number one position in Apple’s Lifestyle category and the number two position in its top 25 free applications. This is people using their mobile actively searching for goods and services.

Mobile display ad campaigns have also far-exceeded many people’s expectations across a range of sectors. They allow advertisers to display information in a teaser format and to entice mobile browsers to click through to a specifically designed ad site to find out more about a product, service or offer, download a video or wallpaper or click to place an order. MediaSmart recently notched up 200 mobile display campaigns for advertisers in the auto, finance, FMCG and entertainment sectors. These campaigns are getting real results: the average interaction rate for mobile advertising is about 30 per cent – that’s 30 per cent of people clicking on an ad and going on to so something else, such as downloading a video, wallpaper or ring-tone, entering a competition, making a call or ordering a product. This is compared with a 3-4 per cent interaction rate which is commonly achieved for online.

Mobile is the glue that brings all the elements of a marketing campaign together

One of the really exciting aspects of mobile’s addition to the marketing mix is its ability to interact with other media, enabling advertisers to extend the reach of offline and online advertising. There are a range of other opportunities to integrate mobile with other media, for example:

• SMS shortcodes – eg. ‘text 19WIN’.
• Mobile codes – scan a code with your mobile camera to get access to content on your mobile
• Send to mobile – search online and take the result with you
• Coupons – present for redemption at a retail store
• Voice to mobile – call a voice service for information or directions and have the info sent direct to your mobile.

Mobile offers sophisticated targeting capabilities to the marketer

The mobile audience can be refined by age and gender, but also by location, household income, and time of day. Media Smart, 3 and Vodaphone have demonstrated similar targeting capabilities for the last year or so. At MediaSmart, we can currently target 1 million Telstra mobile customers, and this is set to increase. Consumer information is ascertained based on the billing address that they include in their mobile contract, which is then refined according to their Mosaic profile – a geodemographic classification that categorises people into 11 groups according to their ‘neighbourhoods’, which is more accurate than post code information. So a Bali holiday package could be marketed to 25-year old females in the ‘Young Ambition’ group and a Gold Coast fun park 40-somethings in the ‘Pushing the Boundaries’ group. And you could target the message to the target audience at the end of a hectic day, just when they’re wishing they could get away from it all.

The capability is also being developed to deliver advertising that is contextual to where a person is located at that very moment. Location-based solutions can allow retailers to send a mobile coupon or incentive when a prospect is just around the corner. For example, in the near future, you might make a video of a house for sale available when the user is in the area during inspection times.

A parting thought…

Mobile is not a marketing add on – it’s at the centre. And that’s because mobile is an essential part of the lives of most in the developed, developing and increasingly, the underdeveloped world!

As Henry Jenkins, Professor of Comparative Media at MIT recently said in a presentation to Tribal DDB in London, “the future of media and advertising is not about technology – it’s about emerging cultural practices”.

Times might be tough in the media sector today, but there’s a lot about the future to be excited about.

This week, Bruce Akhurst, the CEO of Sensis, will be sharing his thoughts on the future in a two-part presentation: The Age of Engagement.

The first part of his speech – covering the rise of local search – will be delivered at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Sydney this Thursday, 23 April.

And, in a departure from the norm, part two of this presentation, which covers the rise of social media will be delivered using – what else – social media!

So, pop back to the Speaking Sensis blog this Friday, 24 April. You’ll be able to view both of Bruce’s speeches.

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.