Speaking Sensis

Is traditional media bowing before the online juggernaut? Don’t you believe it.

Well, trounce me with a tablet and tell me I’m a technophobe.

In contrast with the armies of ‘gurus’ claiming an increasingly irrelevant traditional media is on its knees begging for sweet mercy from the digerati, out come the following two reports.

In February, The Nielsen Company’s Australian Internet and Technology Report 2009 – 2010  found that “the continued increase in time spent online amongst Internet users has, overall, not been at the expense of other media.”

Nielsen found that, while, time spent online grew by over an hour in 2009, consumption of traditional media (like TV, radio and newspapers) actually grew as well.

Go figure!

In fact, Nielsen’s results over several years suggest that, while Internet users tend to spend less (but still substantial) time consuming traditional media than non Internet users, the actual time they spend with traditional media has remained pretty well flat for quite a few years now.

In other words, while time spent online has risen massively, time spent offline hasn’t fallen in response.

Then in March, way over the other side of the world, KPMG UK reported a similar kind of trend.

Their Media and Entertainment Barometer for March found that while time spent online grew by 74 minutes in the six months to March, traditional media consumption ALSO grew by 33 minutes.

So what?

I can’t help thinking there’s a really simple, but really important, message in this data.

That traditional and digital together is far more powerful than digital alone.

Digital media is a massive part of our lives today and will play an even bigger role in the future.

But it won’t be alone, because people want choice. They want a paper in their hands and on their mobiles. They want TV in their lounge and on their iPad.

And the more choice people get, the more media they consume.

In short, the future is everywhere, not just online.

Maybe we should put an end to these phoney media wars and start realising we’re all in this together.

Because, clearly, that’s what consumers (and advertisers) want.

Okay. So, hopefully my last article established that print isn’t a spent force in local search… it’s actually growing.

Having done that, however, I now need to change tack a bit and proffer a slightly different view: that this whole ‘print vs online’ debate is all a bit of a pointless exercise.

For the best part of a decade now, local search players of various persuasions have been running around with their chests puffed out, proclaiming to anyone who’ll listen that “my channel’s bigger than your channel”.

But the sad truth about this posturing is that it’s all pretty much irrelevant.

The bottom line is that buyers are exercising their right to choice and searching for local businesses across all sorts of different channels – like print, online, voice and mobile.

Here’s a case in point.

If we cut the print vs online usage of all the print and online services containing Yellow Pages® advertiser content, we find an interesting set of numbers(1) :

• 41% of the audience use print only;
• 32% use online only;
• 26% use both.

Clearly, in this environment, you can’t truly optimise a local search strategy by choosing between print or online (or any of the other channels).

You can only do that by choosing them all.

Or course, that’s not such an easy thing. If you start toting up the number of vendors offering local search services across all these channels, you’ll quickly find they number into the hundreds.

If you tried to deal with all of them, you could end up spending so much time finding customers that you’d have no time to serve them.

So, the ideal solution in local search ends up looking a bit like this:

1. Provide a wide range of services to buyers so they can choose the way they want to search. That can ultimately lead to a larger audience;
2. Syndicate advertiser content across as many of those channels as possible so advertisers can optimise reach and still get some sleep.

That, in essence, is what we’ve tried to do with Yellow Pages®.

When you advertise in Yellow Pages® today, you’re not just advertising in the print directories. Your advertising is syndicated across a broad network of different services that spans not only different channels but different brands as well.

This includes not only the Yellow Pages® print directories, but the yellow.com.au and whereis.com.au web sites, the 1234 and Call Connect voice services and the Yellow™ Mobile and Whereis® Mobile sites as well.

And it also includes sites from other vendors. Today, Yellow Pages® advertiser content can be searched for in Google Maps, MyLocal, LiveLocal and the new Bing Maps site.

The net result of this ‘one ad, many avenues’ strategy is that advertisers can reach out to a much larger base of potential buyers through the one campaign.

In short, the potential for more reach, more easily.

And the impact of this sort of multi-channel strategy is pretty significant. The bottom line is that syndication through a range of brands and channels leads to a total potential reach for advertisers that no single channel local search solution can come close to matching.

In online, for example, there are six local search sites that individually hold more than 2% share of online traffic in Hitwise’s business directories category(2). They are yellow.com.au, whereis.com.au, whitepages.com.au, Google Maps, TrueLocal and Hotfrog .

Because of Yellow’s syndication strategy (allowing Yellow Pages® content to be searched for through yellow.com.au, whereis.com.au Google Maps as well as Microsoft’s local search sites), Yellow Pages® advertising could appear on sites that generate 64.5% of this traffic. White Pages® Online accounts for 22.5% and the other sites 13%(3) .

In other words, the multi-brand online syndication leads to a massive share of the traffic generated by these major local search sites.

But then you have to figure in print, voice and mobile as well. These add something like 15 million searches to the potential reach of Yellow Pages® advertising every week(4) .

Clearly, being able to advertise across multiple brands and channels is a major advantage in local search.

Which, as I said before, kind of renders this whole ‘print vs online’ debate as moot.

The bottom line here is that people aren’t turning into online zealots, no matter how much some wish they were.

Instead, buyers are showing their preference for choice.

The local search providers and advertisers who recognise that are the ones most likely to win.

Related links

Sensis on local search 1 – BIG

Sensis on local search 2 – GROWING

People pretending that online local search is replacing print directories are missing a far more exciting reality… that local search is growing rapidly.

For a long time now, I’ve marvelled at how online industry commentators seem fascinated with death.

As a child of the dot.com boom, I vividly recall claims of the imminent Internet-related death of many industries.

I remember having a debate with an employer in the late 90s who firmly believed that by 2005, bricks and mortar travel agents would be gone forever.

And I’ve listened for over a decade now to people saying that print media was going to go down the gurgler.

You read and hear these claims all over the place. And comments like “there is no doubt that the directory is dead” (which was recently trumpeted by an eager Australian industry identity) show that Yellow Pages® print directories are far from immune from these accusations.

You get a sense from all this doom and gloom that the local search market is static.

Not growing.

Like a pie that’s being voraciously chomped up by the new local search players.

But the reality is far more interesting… and exciting for the industry. The local search pie is actually growing – and pretty quickly by the look of things.

Take the Yellow Pages® network for example. This network includes all the different products and services that contain Yellow Pages® advertiser content.

In 2008 (1):

• Last 7 day usage of Yellow Pages® print directories grew by 4.9%. Yes, you did read the word ‘grew’ correctly.
• Online usage of local search sites carrying Yellow Pages® content (yellowpages.com.au, whereis.com.au, Google Maps and MyLocal) grew by 30%.
• Voice usage, through services like Call Connect and 1234, grew by 10%.

And ‘MoLo’, or local search sites on your mobile phone (Yellow™ Mobile and Whereis® Mobile), grew by a whopping 190% from March quarter of 2008 to March quarter 2009. Yes, it’s growing from a small base, but, at this rate, it won’t be small for long.

Clearly this data suggests that the number of buyers using local search in all its forms is growing rapidly.

In fact, when I look at these trends, I can’t help thinking that there’s a real elasticity in local search. It seems like the more options you give local search users, the more they search… and the more services they use.

In other words, it looks like local search users aren’t trending from one channel to another. They’re tending to use both.

And there’s a statistic that demonstrates this.

Migration means people shifting away from print. The claim is that online users have no use for print directories anymore, so they don’t use them.

So, clearly, you’d expect to see heavy (at least daily) Internet users turning away from Yellow Pages® print directories. As a result, the percentage of them using print would be much lower than for the rest of the population.

But the data actually tells quite a different story. It shows that daily online users are just as likely to use Yellow Pages® print directories as people who don’t use the Internet as often or don’t use it at all (2).

I’d draw three conclusions from this data.

Firstly, that print directories aren’t declining in the way people claim.

Secondly, that the local search audience is actually growing pretty quickly. As I said, this is a far more exciting story than the doom and gloom claimed by many in the online industry.

And, thirdly (and most importantly), if you really want to make the most of local search, your advertising needs to be everywhere… across print, online, voice and mobile.

Which is a great segue into the final article in this series – DIVERSE.

Look out for it in the next few days. Or check out part 1 of the Sensis on local search series – BIG.

In answer to the flood of questions about local search (how big is it, where do people search and so on), here’s a three part series looking at local search in Australia and the role Yellow Pages® plays. To begin with… what is local search and how big is it?

So, you just got engaged. Congratulations.

And commiserations too.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not being some sort of mean-spirited marriage maligner here. I’ve been married for a decade and it’s a wonderful institution.

But I can tell you from bitter experience that between now and your wedding night you’re going to confront a world of pain.

And you’re going to need an army of people to help you through it. Like reception centres, cake makers, musicians, caterers, jewellers, insurers, removalists, party suppliers, travel agents, florists, car hire, dressmakers, formal wear.

And that’s just for the happy day. What about the real estate agents, conveyancers, removalists, insurers and goodness knows what else you’ll need as you start your life together?

One of the most common ways Australians find these products and services is through local search. The world of local search includes services like Yellow Pages® or White Pages® directories in print, online or mobile, voice services like 1234, online mapping / local search sites like Whereis.com.au, Google Maps, the local search section Microsoft’s newly launched Bing and so on.

Local search services are like giant buying guides. They help people search for suppliers of the products and services they need. They support purchase decisions by helping people find, assess, compare and contact the right supplier.

Often (but, admittedly, not always) in their local area: which, to state the obvious, is where the term local search comes from.

Now, local search is a seriously popular way of buying. About 60% of the Australian population (over 10 million people) use one of the more popular print or online local search services every month(1).

And this usage is often concentrated around significant life events, like the aforementioned marriage, leaving home, buying a house etc. To give you an idea of what I mean, over 78% of people who built or bought a new home or apartment in the last year use local search every month. That’s over 17 percentage points more than the general population(2).

And because local search users are basically looking to complete a sale, the likelihood that they’ll contact a business is very high. In fact, 90% of Yellow Pages® searches result in a call being made(3): a conversion rate (in advertising speak) that is virtually unmatched by any other form of advertising.

Given this level of performance, it’s not surprising that local search has an enormous advertiser base. There are, for example, over 300,000 Australian businesses advertising in the Yellow Pages® today.

Businesses just like these…

So, clearly, local search is big. Big usage. Big potential return on investment. Big advertiser base.

But it’s also different. Advertising in local search is a totally different experience to virtually all other forms of advertising.

And there’s a simple reason for that. While most other forms of advertising interrupt consumers, local search is a service they consciously access – an information service full of advertising that actually helps them make decisions.

This makes local search unique in four very distinct ways.

1. Local search is very much a small and medium enterprise form of advertising. It’s about local businesses reaching out to local buyers. It is one of the most popular forms of advertising among Australian SMEs.
2. Local search drives direct contact, not purely brand equity. It can convert to things like calls, visits… customers, rather than purely brand outcomes like awareness.
3. Broadcast advertising – like TV, print display ads, outdoor etc – relies heavily on emotional appeal. Local search runs on informational appeal. The things that make local search campaigns work go beyond strong differentiators and calls to action. Simple pieces of information like phone numbers, opening hours, brands and products sold, credit cards taken, testimonials and so on can potential contribute massively to the impact of local search advertising.
4. And local search is directly comparative. People look at competitive ads and compare them, which doesn’t generally occur in broadcast advertising. So you potentially need to think far more about competitors’ ads than you do in other forms of advertising.

So that’s a brief primer on local search. Keep an eye out for the next episode – GROWING – early next week.

UPDATE: Part 2 – GROWING – is now online. Check it out here.

Today, Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst spoke at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon on what he describes as The Age of Engagement.

Digital media isn’t merely cannibalising traditional media. It’s giving marketers new tools to work with and the ability to build deep, valuable relationships with customers.

The first presentation in this series looks at how local search is helping marketers support consumer purchase decisions in exciting new ways. And how the next generation of local search is being driven by the mobile phone.

The second presentation looks at social media. Be sure to check back as this presentation will be uploaded shortly.

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.