Speaking Sensis

Remember when switched-on websites were the rage? And then do you remember when a hip and happening mobile site was the business? And up until last week, all the discussion was about smart phone apps and now these damn tablets have come along and guess what? We need to adapt to that space too.

And while the battle of the platforms takes place in one corner of the room, in the other there’s this other epic factor that has become as much a part of our day as brushing our teeth – the phenomenon known as social media. 

I could drone on and on about the latest round of growth stats concerning social media networks but it would pretty much tell the same story as it did last year and the year before that. And that is more and more people all over the world, irrespective of gender, age and cultural background, are choosing social networks as a way of staying connected and engaged with communities of friends and interests.

What’s even more interesting is that recently the battle between search (Google) and social (Facebook) has really gone into overdrive.

The growth is really happening in social networks (27.8% week ending 17 October 2009 compared with week ending 17 October 2008*), with search engines growing at the lesser rate of 4.6%.

In other markets monitored by Hitwise, social has already taken over search. And while its only happening sporadically here (ie over the Christmas period), it’s reasonable to expect the same patterns emerge in Australia.

For Citysearch, this paradigm shift is a good thing. 

Each month I’m going to give you the low down on how Citysearch is travelling on the emerging digital frontier. We’ll talk about some of the things we’re doing in the social space, the software space and how we’re handing the developments on the hardware front, too. Some things we’ll do will work really well,  other things won’t pan out the way we wanted them to – which means working through the experience and seeing if we can do things better. And we’ll use this space to share our journey with you. Who knows – our next big thing might come from one of your ideas!

* The Rise and Rise of the Social Network: An Experian Hitwise Asia Pacific Report, November 2009.

Hi again, and thanks for taking the time to find out more about how Sensis is bringing buyers and sellers together. In today’s update you can read about a tasty new way to demonstrate the value of Yellow® Pages; kicking off the 2010 metro canvass; more new innovations to make life easier for buyers and sellers; the phenomenal growth of mobile; and some more great news about our commitment to sustainability.


8,500 guys and girls and a pizza place
In April, Sensis ran a ground-breaking campaign that really brought the value of Yellow Pages® to life. The campaign worked a bit like this. Team up with well-known Melbourne pizza chef, Tony Fazio. Open a restaurant offering free pizza for two weeks. Don’t tell anyone the address or phone number. Instead tell them to “look it up the way you would any other business”. Then sit back and watch the dough fly.

And fly it did. Over the campaign’s two weeks, over 8,500 calls were made to Hidden Pizza, with over 70% of the callers saying they found Hidden Pizza through the print, online and mobile Yellow Pages®. That’s a lot of pizza… and a great testament to the ability of Yellow Pages® to bring buyers to your door.

Yellow Pages® Metro Canvass is up and running
Our people are now out and about talking to businesses as part of the 2010 Yellow Pages® metropolitan canvass. This must be one of the largest customer engagement programs in Australia, with consultants all over Australia contacting more than half a million businesses over the next few months.

This year, we’ve got some great new products for our customers. These include a Brisbane version of the popular Yellow Pages® In the Car book, Yellow Pages® Online Gold Plus, which is a new advertising solution for businesses without a web site, and enhanced accountability through our metered ad program.

But, perhaps the most exciting new step is a range of bundles that make it even easier for our customers to advertise right across our network. As I’ve talked about before, Yellow Pages® has evolved from a print directory to a diverse and sophisticated advertising network spanning print, online, voice and mobile. These bundles make it easier for businesses to profile themselves to potential buyers right across the network.

From the labs
Of course, we’ve been busy delivering for buyers – the people who use our products – as well.

Firstly, we’ve launched more new features to make our digital services easier to use.

Recently, we reconfigured the Yellow Pages® Online search experience. To begin with, we’ve dropped the ‘business name’ and ‘business type’ radio buttons in favour of a more intuitive search. Now, you can search for a business name, like ‘Sensis’ without having to click a ‘business name’ search button. Instead Yellow Pages® Online will drop down suggested listings relating to Sensis for you to choose from. We’ve also re-built the business profile pages to give buyers easier access to more content. The results of this have been pretty immediate, with a significant reduction in nil result searches and a big rise in interaction: most notably in the number of business profile readers clicking on email links and image galleries.

We’ve also added a series of new features to the White Pages® Online site. White Pages® is all about finding people and businesses you already know, so it’s a fair bet that you’ll be wanting to find your White Pages® contacts over and over again. Recently, we made this easier with the ability to save your contacts to a new ‘My List’ feature on White Pages® Online. We also launched send to mobile, which lets you send your listing from White Pages® Online straight to your mobile to save in your contacts.  In May, we’ll be taking this a step further by launching a new ‘save and share’ feature. With save and share, you’ll be able to save your White Pages® contacts to your pages on Facebook and a wide range of other social networks.

Secondly, we’ve made our services easier to access with new additions to our network.

As you may know, Telstra recently released the home phone of the future, the T-Hub. This is great for buyers and sellers using our services because White Pages®, Yellow Pages® and 1234 (with Whereis® coming soon) are all easily accessible right where your phone is. Just one touch of the console and you’re searching. And when you find the result in Yellow Pages®, you don’t even have to dial… just click to call.

The Yellow Pages® enhanced location search on Whereis.com I mentioned last time is also delivering results. Yellow Pages advertisers are now being profiled on Whereis.com more than 8 million times a month: a number that’s been boosted by about 2 million since we launched the enhanced location feature . This is fantastic for both buyers and sellers. It means Whereis is playing a growing role in bringing buyers and sellers together, while improving the ROI we can offer Yellow Pages® advertisers.

Finally, we’ve also been busy in the mobile space.

We launched a new CitySearch® Mobile site, with an improved look and feel, expanded TV and Movies content, a new ‘Bars’ vertical and improved mapping functionality. And we also launched new Yellow Pages® and White Pages® apps for Android devices to complement the incredibly successful launch of our iPhone apps.

Mobile coming up trumps
On that note, mobile has been an incredible success story for the buyers and sellers who rely on our services. As I’ve mentioned before, mobile usage is growing at a rate of knots. Average monthly Yellow Pages® Mobile visits for the March quarter have doubled YoY yet again. When you look across our entire network, mobile now accounts for over 13% of our total digital (online and mobile) usage.

And smart phone apps are playing an enormous role in this exciting growth. iPhone apps account for something like half of our total Yellow Pages® Mobile and White Pages® Mobile usage and these two apps still sit in the lifestyle category Top 10 in Apple’s App Store … months after they were launched.

More great news on the sustainability front
As I mentioned last month, I’m really proud of the positive contribution being made by our sustainability initiatives; such as our directory recycling program and the decision to offset our carbon emissions through Greenhouse Friendly™ accredited providers and projects in Australia.

Now, we’ve taken this a step further with the release of a new book: Small Business, Big Opportunity: Sustainable Growth. This free book, which is a complement to our highly successful advertising guide, provides practical information on how businesses can reduce their impact on the environment and save money as well.

Small Business, Big Opportunity: Sustainable Growth has been written by Jon Dee, who is the Founder and Managing Director of the not-for-profit action group, Do Something, and the NSW Australian of the Year 2010. If you’d like to order a copy, just check out the Small Business section on our corporate web site.

And finally, in more good news on the sustainability front, I’m pleased to say that our efforts to support a more sustainable future are being acknowledged. Last year we joined the global Corporate Responsibility Index program for the first time. This program is run in Australia by the St James Ethics Centre and we were incredibly proud to achieve a ‘Bronze’ rating and Best New Entry Award in our first year. Since then, we’ve put a lot more work into our sustainability commitments and, as a result, I’m told we have lifted our result even higher this year. More on that next time, when the results are out.

Until then, all the best,

With what seems like more iPhone apps in the market than iPhones in Australia, Citysearch has done the sensible thing and launched a makeover of Citysearch Mobile for pre-app mobile users. Why is this sensible? Well, there’s only about 1 million iPhones in use in Australia (no one except for Steve Jobs really knows for sure) which is a fairly small share of the market compared to the many millions of  other smart phone users out there.

At Citysearch, we are always working on great new ways to provide on-the-go content to our users and we are working with our majority market first.

If you haven’t actually used Citysearch Mobile – then stop reading, start using, then come back to reading – but if you have already used Citysearch Mobile, I’m about to give you another reason to smile. I’m talking about a mobile site that includes a new look and feel (I know that’s very car salesmany – but it’s true) more on-the-go content and updated Whereis Maps thanks to the map people over at Whereis Mobile.

On-the-go content is the thing we say at Citysearch when we want to pile into a couple of words all the stuff you need at your finger tips when you’re out – preferably in the city of your choice! We’re talking info on movies, restaurants, music and TV – with new additional content in the movie and TV sections like star ratings, images and links to more articles from news and reviews pages, plus a whole new section devoted to bars so you can find the best watering hole in your city – whether it’s a friendly pub with an open fire or your uber-trendy joint frequented by super models reality TV stars.   

Oh yeah – and here’s the great thing about all of this – it’s FREE to browse for Telstra 3G and Next G™ mobile customers and is also available on other mobile carriers across Australia who have a compatible mobile – which means more people can use our Citysearch entertainment portal – which makes the Citysearch team pretty happy people knowing we’re helping make the important decisions like where to eat, what to drink, what movie to see and which TV show to watch. 

In my blogclusion, I agree, that’s a lot of excitement in a little package on your mobile, but you can’t underestimate the need for that kind of information at your finger tips – presented in that shiny new car kind of way – and how greatly appreciated you’ll be among your friends when you’re the one capable of making the entertainment decisions on-the-go. 

Type in m.citysearch.com.au to your mobile and have a great time in your nearest capital city without an app in sight!  Remember to watch this blog for upcoming great announcements about our constant work to improve on-the-go content.
Cheers

Cath

Before I kick off today I’d like to take this opportunity to mention an industry first advertising product for iPhones launched by MediaSmart. Simon Canning at The Australian wrote about it today. You can read his article by clicking here. Sensis’ new interactive mobile ads product was launched to the market this week with Open Universities taking out the first campaign.

Mobility – advertising’s first portable medium

With the buzz surrounding the launch of the iPad in the US - claiming to have sold 300,000 of them in the first day! – now is a good time to touch on an area I feel will provide unprecedented opportunities for advertising agencies, brands and digital publishers in the months and years to come. That area is mobility. And with the launch and uptake of new devices, mobility means the web has become an anytime, anywhere proposition with obvious and exciting opportunities for the ad industry.

To provide you with some background to my thinking, the mobile internet has exploded over the last two years. It is now so large, mobile internet is now considered by many in the industry as mainstream. In December last year, our mobile network hit 2.5m visits for the first time, growing  70% YoY. And by ‘our mobile network’ I am talking about the Yellow Pages, White Pages, Whereis, Citysearch and Sensis Search mobile sites.

And let’s not forget about the continued growth of the BigPond mobile portal – these guys now enjoy more than 2m unique visits each month and the numbers keep growing!

To put this into perspective, after Yellow Pages Online was launched in 1995, it took  five years to reach half a million unique visitors a month. In comparison it’s taken Yellow Pages Mobile only two years to reach that number and White Pages Mobile, which was launched mid last year, has almost achieved that number in only six months.

Now that’s impressive growth by anyone’s standards.

The future of mobility

After Kindle was launched last year, Amazon advised that, on Xmas Day, they sold more e-books than printed books for the first time.

We’re seeing a raft of new touch screens being released onto the market, with the big one – Apple’s iPad – due to hit Aussie stores in the coming weeks and the critics predicting it will revolutionise the way content is accessed.

So we now have devices for almost every occasion and they’re all internet-enabled. From large screen TVs to tiny mobile phones. So what’s next? Accessories!

Will one device eventually control everything? The phone making all other devices its slave? Will all devices operate separately, drawing from the cloud? Or will the future be a hybrid of the two?

That leads me to discuss applications.

The application environment for mobiles is far richer than online in its early years. There are already thousands of apps, books, games etc in Apple’s App Store, we now have Kindle looking for applications. More than half of the White Pages Mobile usage I mentioned above is coming from iPhones.

Precision targeting – it’s now becoming a reality

In 2008, we launched customer profile targeting in mobile which means more efficient advertising for companies and more relevant content for users. With geo-targeting growing rapidly, location services one of the most used mobile apps through both mobile phones and sat nav devices.

Whereis continues to be our most popular mobile application as well as being very popular on the web and sat nav. These sites enable the search for services based on location and the targeting of people based on their location.

So the future of mobility is exciting – and we’re only just warming up.

Mark Shaw

With the end of the year almost upon us, Sensis’ CEO, Bruce Akhurst, provides his first bi-monthly update.

Hi.

I thought it might be good to end the year by starting something… a regular report that I hope will give you a deeper insight into how Sensis is working to improve the value we offer all Australians.

New ways to help you find, buy and sell
Sensis is committed to helping you find, buy and sell. Our services help you find the suppliers you need right when you need them. In doing this, we help thousands of local businesses find their lifeblood – customers.

Our innovation programs reflect this commitment. How can we make our services simpler and more informative for buyers? And how can we build the value and simplicity of our advertiser services?

On this front, we’ve been particularly busy in the last few weeks. We launched the White Pages® app for iPhone recently. I was very happy to see that it reached the #1 free app in Apple’s App Store very quickly. This caps off an exciting quarter for our mobile sites, with usage growing off the scale. We launched White Pages® Mobile four months ago and it’s already delivering over 400,000 visits a month¹. At about the same time, we also launched the Yellow Pages® iPhone app. Since then, Yellow Pages® Mobile usage has more than doubled to over 650,000 visits a month²… in just a few months!  Clearly, Australians are connecting with these new generation mobile services and that’s great for advertisers. Our network strategy means that Yellow Pages® advertisers – print and online – can be searched through mobile and therefore can benefit from mobile usage growth.

We’ve also recently commenced delivery of the 2009 Yellow Pages®. This year’s book includes a more informative front cover and an expanded information section. Both of these enhancements were specific requests from Australians who participated in research we conducted earlier this year.

In Yellow Pages® Online, we’ve recently launched a new advertiser product – Purely Mobile Business, or PMB. PMB is designed for mobile businesses, like mobile mechanics, looking to reach out to customers in the areas they service.

We also recently launched Category Search, which is a new product that lets advertisers combine Voice, Whereis® and Citysearch® advertising into a single, easy to use product. Response has been strong, with hundreds of customers choosing Category Search in just a few weeks.

The Whereis® team has just released 3D City Maps for GPS to sat nav equipment manufacturers. 3D City Maps bring the Sydney and Melbourne CBD areas to life by providing a real-time 3D city-scape. 3D City Maps should be launched in popular GPS units shortly, and more cities will be ‘3D’d’ in the near future.

Finally, MediaSmart – our online and mobile display advertising business – has released new targeting capabilities. Working closely with Telstra, we’ve developed a segmentation capability that ensures mobile display advertising is more relevant and targeted for both mobile users and advertisers… like helping a major bank deliver specific branch manager contact details to customers mobile phones based on their location. This is a genuinely unique capability and I’m pleased to say the support from marketers has been fantastic.

In the field
Right now, our Yellow Pages® regional and local consultants are out talking to advertisers, as are our White Pages® consultants. We’ve been backing them up with new products, comprehensive training and a much stronger focus on engaging with local communities.

This local focus led to the opening of a new office in Penrith on November 10 (with offices in Ballina and Coffs Harbour also opening soon). We were really pleased to open Penrith by announcing a new community partnership with Great Community Transport. At the same time, we’ve been increasing our support for local businesses by regularly sponsoring and speaking at local events – over 80 in the last few months.

1.5 million calls… and counting
If you ever wanted proof of the value of Yellow Pages®, here it is. As you may know, we’ve been running a metered ad program for two years now. This program helps advertisers track the number of calls they receive from Yellow Pages® print.

In January, we began monitoring the phone calls delivered by Yellow Pages® print to a small cross-section of display ad customers (a sample of less than 1% of our total customer base). By early November, the number of calls delivered to these customers by Yellow Pages® print passed the 1.5 million threshold!

Imagine how many valuable phone calls Yellow Pages® is delivering to all our advertisers. Imagine how many more enquiries there are when you add people who are bypassing the phone and visiting the store or office. And imagine how that number could grow even further if you included all the other Sensis and third party online, mobile and voice services that form the Yellow Pages® network.

Interesting movements in the advertising market
Recently, we’ve seen some interesting movements in the media sector. The September quarter IAB report showed 3.3% growth in the online advertising market compared to the September quarter last year³. While this is a marked slowdown on last year, the results were really buoying for Sensis, as they show we are growing our share of the market.

Another interesting observation comes from our Adstream business. Adstream sits at the centre of the ad industry by helping marketers, agencies and media outlets, like TV, radio and newspaper publishers, manage and distribute their ad content. We’ve seen renewed growth in enquiries to Adstream recently. Could this mean the ad industry’s on its way back?

Our people have spoken
The other day, we received the results of our latest employee opinion survey. This is a global survey undertaken by Towers Perrin and it covers some of Australia’s, and the worlds, largest companies. In the latest survey, Sensis exceeded the Australian norm (the average of all Australian companies) in every category. Our results also benchmarked well among the world’s best employers, with results in a number of categories exceeding global norms. This is fantastic news. We work hard to ensure Sensis is a great place to work for our present and future employees. These results tell us we’re on the right track.

Sensis Sustainability Report
Finally, if you’d like to know more about Sensis’ strategy, operations, performance and impacts, I’d recommend you check out the 2008/9 Sensis Sustainability Report, which has just been launched. You can download it today from our newly upgraded corporate site.

Until next time
So that’s it for now. Have a happy, relaxing and safe Christmas and New Year. I’ll be back to you with a further update in February. In the meantime, thanks for all your support. You can rest assured we’ll be pulling out all stops to keep improving our value to you.

1: Omiture Site Catalyst, November 2009;
2: ibid
3: PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Internet Advertising Bureau Online Advertising Expenditure Report, quarter ended September 2009.

Now you can sign into Facebook on Citysearch and become a trusted reviewer for us and all your friends!

We’re changing the way we do things on Citysearch by working a little closer with Facebook.

Thanks to Facebook Connect, you can now login to Facebook via Citysearch when you post a user review. Once you’ve logged in, your Facebook avatar (that’s your profile pic) will appear on Citysearch next to your comment. At the same time, you will be given the option to publish a note to your newsfeed that you’ve commented.

For example, say you’ve commented on our ‘Hey Hey’ article, you also have the option to tell your friends to read what you’ve said – ie, “Anyone who thinks the Hey Hey Skit was fine is so far from reality that they probably think Graham Kennedy still hosts a show with Bert – and that’s just for starters! Click thru to read my comments in full!” Once you’ve commented on your newsfeed your friends can ‘Like’, ‘Comment’ or click-thru to read your review. It’s all about the conversation!

With statistics* claiming that 78% of people trust the recommendations of consumers foremost, (that’s you), never before have your opinions carried so much weight or mattered so much. Given it’s our mission to recommend the best entertainment and lifestyle options on offer in Australia, we think opening things up to our users to add their voice  – whether they agree or disagree- is pretty important, and adding to our credibility.

And once you’ve posted your review, whether it’s your insight into good-value restaurants, hard-to-find bars, new wave clubs, must-see movie blockbusters, intelligent TV, emerging and dinosaur bands on tour or cutting edge arts and cultural events (and we use that term loosely to include AFL and NRL and plenty more), all your friends can agree or disagree – or is that agree to disagree?

These changes are great news for Facebook users who are getting a little tired of sending hugs and pokes or completing What species of bird are you? quizzes by providing you with real content to talk about. And it’s good for us because we get to hear it like it really is, and best of all, we all get to participate in the conversation across a very big audience.

So if you’re the next Margaret or David, Molly Meldrum or maybe even a Richard Wilkins (see, there’s a whole world of opportunity out there for some fresh opinions and talent), say it on Citysearch, boost your profile and kick start your reviewing career today!

* Nielsen ‘Trust in Advertising’ Report October, 2007

In a bid to connect more advertisers with consumers who are looking for products and services online, Sensis announced a helpful new service last week. The launch of ‘category search’ on www.whereis.com and www.citysearch.com.au means Sensis advertisers can now access priority advertising across these two online sites.

So what does this actually mean for you or I? Well it means when the millions of people who use the Whereis.com or Citysearch.com.au sites each month and they search for a business either on a map or while they’re browsing entertainment information at Citysearch, a list of ‘priority advertisers’ relevant to what they are looking for will appear at the top of the search results. Top advertisers in whereis.com will also open up automatically on the map to create a seamless one-click experience for those looking for a business. Advertisers on citysearch.com.au receive richer profile pages and reviews from the public about their product or service.

If you want to check out an example of this on www.whereis.com search for ‘florist’ in ‘Camberwell’.

To view an example of this on www.citysearch.com.au type ‘restaurant’ in the search box on the home page.

Ok, Citysearch® – Australia’s leading entertainment and lifestyle website- wants your opinion! Be it your favourite place for a Sunday Session or the most romantic restaurant in town, Citysearch® is on a mission to uncover and award Australia’s favourite city hot spots via a campaign called the Citysearch® Best in the City Awards. Check it out at Citysearch.com.au/awards.

The Best in the City Awards has Citysearch® turning the tables on city urbanites and asking them what they think are the best places in town. Unlike countless industry awards that have been done to death, these awards are ‘the people’s choice’ awards – local categories, local picks, voted by local people – people who know and love their city.

So it could be the incredible view from the roof-top bar, the barista who is a master of latte art, the talented street performer in your local strip or the waiter who knows exactly how you like your steak. Citysearch® believes successful city entertainment is built on an ability to offer a unique experience and make it a memorable moment in time. So now it’s time to give Australia’s savvy public a voice and a chance to tell us what they love most about their city.

Until 12 September 2009 nominations are open. Monday 21 September 2009 will see the finalists announced and the public will be invited to vote.

Voting closes 23 October and the inaugural Citysearch® Best in the City Award winners will be announced 2 November 2009.

The awards are running in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. The ten award categories represent the best entertainment options in town, from ‘Best Friday night drinks’ to ‘Best vegie fare’ with the winner in each category taking home the prestigious Eye-Con trophy and the kudos that comes with being voted number one.

So tell us what’s hot in your city and nominate your favourite entertainment options for the title of Citysearch® Best in the City, visit www.Citysearch.com.au/awards.

AWARD CATEGORIES

• Best vegie fare
• Best service to make you smile
• Best Sunday session
• Best place for a first date
• Best Bathroom
• Best Friday night drinks
• Best Place to Watch the Game
• Best Cheap and Cheerful
• Best Street Performance
• Best in the kid-friendly stakes

Gangs of thugs roaming the streets with razors. Open brawls over drugs and booze. Ruthless criminals who murder at the drop of a hat.

More reasons to stay indoors and watch Masterchef?

No.

Welcome to Sydney in the 1920s and 1930s: when the grog was sly, the fights were for keeps and even a visit to the barbers was a death-defying experience.

In this look at a fascinating part of our history, Citysearch® interviews Nerida Campbell about Sydney’s early 20th century criminal underbelly and the women that ruled the roost – women like Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine.

Nerida is curator of the Femme Fatale exhibition, which is running at the Sydney’s Justice and Police Museum until April 2010.