Archive of Earlier Stories
MSN meets its Match.com – Sep 08
MSN are now selling advertising onto a co-branded match.com website. The advertising opportunity is the Leader Board 728*90 (above).
Surprisingly (or maybe not??) the match.com co-branded site has a male skew…so If you have any campaigns looking for Leader Board inventory or a higher male demographic then here is another option to consider. There’s more information on Match.com below
Also MSN are now offering a ROS placement for $10cpm. This is a blind buy and covers medium rectangle and leader board inventory over the following: all MSN categories (News, Sport, Entertainment etc) Match.com co-brand, seek.co.nz co-brand and the NZ Herald co-brand.
About Match.com
Match.com offers a fun and secure environment to meet other quality singles. It’s also a great place to build loving and trusting friendships that can lead to lasting, offline relationships.
This is the Worlds largest online dating website, with over 8,000,000 users.
MSN consumers click through to the dating website via the MSN Network. This partnership enables advertisers to reach a wider audience from the best of both brands.
Let the Fashion Fight Begin – Aug 08
It’s shaping up as the cat(walk) fight of the year. At stake is the crown for best online coverage of Air New Zealand Fashion Week 2008.
In the red corner, it’s powerhouse publisher ACP with the awesome strength of the RunwayReporter.com and Fashion Quarterly brands behind them. In the blue corner, it’s the challenger, APN with its secret weapon, a special event section on NZHerald.co.nz supported by journalists from Viva, Canvas and Simply You.
Who will have the best gossip? Who will score the best runway shots? Whose Christian Louboutin clad heels will leave the biggest impression and who will lift the (Fendi) belt and be declared New Zealands Next Top Fashion Site?
I jest of course. With such support from the major publishers the real winners are going to be the organisers of the event and you, the absolutely fabulous public of New Zealand.
Both publishers will generate serious traffic and they have both put exceptional advertising and sponsorship packages into the market. Are you interested in targeting the Fashion Week audience? If so contact me today for details – john@360interactive.co.nz – fashion week commences 16th September 2008.
Food & Wine – How we created the perfect match – June 08
In a recent post about online magazines (and in this months NZ Marketing magazine) we gave our views on what the ingredients are for a successful sponsorship.
We were able to use this advice to help one of The Hyde Agency clients, the New Zealand Wine Society, relaunch their e-commerce website.
The new site enjoywine.co.nz is now the exclusive wine content provider to foodlovers.co.nz, Helen Jacksons fantastically successful foodie website.
The partnership includes sponsorship, integration, co-promotions, text links and a range of other exciting elements.
We urge you to sample the benefits yourself – sign up for the Foodlovers e-mail at this address and you will get $50 off a case order from the Wine Society (and as they say in the ads – conditions apply).
Further reference: Interested in sponsorships or partnerships? Drop me a line and we’ll start to help you today. john@360interactive.co.nz
NZ Internet Advertising Jumps 67% in Quarter One – June 08
The pace at which New Zealand advertisers are flocking to the internet has been revealed.
On Monday the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PriceWaterhouseCoopers released their report on market activity. It shows a massive 67% increase in ad spend over the same period last year.
Mark Evans, CEO, IABNZ, said “the evidence from this report is that local advertisers are starting to embrace interactive advertising in ever increasing numbers and with increasingly large proportions of their advertising budgets.
Clearly advertising dollars are following audiences online. There are signs here that New Zealand is finally starting to play catch-up with international advertising trends, which have fuelled the spectacular growth of interactive advertising globally.”
Here are some key points from the report which you can access here
The size of the market $45.8 million in quarter 1 2008, up from 25.8 million in Q1 2007
All 3 sectors which make up the digital market showed growth
Display advertising reached $11.54m (up from 6.59m Q1 2007)
Search & Directories reached $15.13m (up from 6.82m Q1 2007)
Classified reached $19.19m (up from $12.42m Q1 2007).
Here is a breakdown of the type of media included in the IAB/PWC report:
Display Advertising
Expenditure on advertising including banners, buttons, skyscrapers, rich-media, streaming advertising and other forms of interactive Display advertising.
Classified Advertising
Expenditure on advertisements placed to buy or sell an item or service, or to report an item of information including “listing” advertisements for Real Estate, Recruitment, Automotive, Personals and any other classified advertisements.
Search & Directories Advertising
Expenditure from online Directories or search engine listings.
Cannes Report 2: Creatives Win Big in 2008 Media Lions – July 08
In a normal world, Creative Agencies enter into their creative awards and we Media sorts put forward our best work into our own Media Awards. This year in Cannes, something like 40% of the 2,000 media entries were from Creative Agencies.
The Grand Prix went to a creative agency…..no doubt with a great deal of input from their media partners, quite simply though, it is the creative guys and gals that are best at this whole Awards gig.
When canvassing some of the Media Jury members, remembering these people head up some of the biggest media shops in the world….not one had budget allocations for entering awards and not one had any processes in place for incentivising their teams either to enter, or rewards for winning.
I have to admit that I have never been a major fan of awards-entering and have tended to steer away because of the time and dollar investment required. I may have been wrong.
The kudos that winners and agencies at this level receive is worth the investment alone, add on team pride, agency credibility and general show-off-ability, then it’s a no brainer.
Kiwis have always been able to make things great happen with a small budget, a hairclip and a potato and I would encourage all media agencies to get into with these awards.
I am happy to provide handy hints on entering if anyone wants to get more involved.
Number of Online Ad Campaigns Up 14% in May. Published June 2008.
The number of display advertising campaigns on New Zealand sites has reached an all time high. In May 2008. Nielsen’s AdRelevance, a tool for measuring the online market, picked up 1,369 campaigns from 647 distinct advertisers. This is the largest volume of activity measured in the 12 months Nielsen’s have been monitoring campaign data. The number of campaigns rose 14% over the previous month.
The top advertisers for the month (as measured in page impressions) were KiwiBank, Kia Motors and Peugeot. A more extensive list of top advertisers can be found below.
Reach Out to Mobile Phone Users. Published June 2008
How many mobile phones have you got? Mobile phone penetration in New Zealand is over 100%. Newer model cellphones are stacked with features, offering a range of rich applications from mobile TV to music downloads.
Added to this, very soon, the i-phone wave will officially reach our shores.
With all of this going for it, is it time for marketers to consider their mobile media options? Lets have a look at what’s available…
HooHaa.
HooHaa have signed up close to 70,000 people for their mobile rewards service. The premise is simple. Kiwi consumers sign up with HooHaa and choose to have marketing messages sent to them by txt.
Users get 10c for every text they receive and they can redeem this as mobile phone credits, charity donations, or cash once it reaches $2.50. There is a strict anti-spam and security policy, which reinforces the subscribers willingness to use the scheme.
Ursula Mattar, the head of sales, tells us that the database is increasing thanks to their marketing
investment and that 70% of their users are in the 18-35 demographic.
HooHaa has agreements with both Telecom and Vodafone but is independent and has no other ‘connections’ with the phone companies .
Snakk Media – Advertise on Vodafone Live
With the arrival of Snakk Media it is now possible to reach more than half of NZ’s mobile internet population. Snakk’s media options revolve around banners at the top of pages on the Vodafone live screen. These mini banners can be clicked on to take users to special landing pages which, helpfully, Snakk help yo to create.
Many of the the terms and concepts are similar to internet banner advertising – so if you understand cost per thousand and click throughs etc you’ll be okay.
Snakk Media is powered by the mobile marketing gurus at the Hyperfactory and the back end technology allows sophisticated targeting, reporting and optimisation.
Both Snakk Media and HooHaa quote response rates much higher than traditional online banner campaigns. E-mail us if you are curious to find out more. John@360interactive.co.nz rebecca@360interactive.co.nz
Publishers Mean Business. Published June 2008
It’s the economy, stupid! Boy, hasn’t that slogan from Bill Clinton’s election campaign returned to haunt us?
Financial affairs are now affecting everything we do from filling the car to ordering a toasted cheese Panini. With economic news reaching a crescendo perhaps it’s appropriate that many New Zealand sites are now revamping their business and finance sections.
Here is a brief overview of activity in the sector:
Fairfax New Zealand are promoting the impending launch of BusinessDay.co.nz (www.businessday.co.nz), a local version of the comprehensive Australian financial news site while also selling advertising on the premium focused NZ Stock Exchange website (www.nzx.com). Advertising packages and sponsorships of sections are available to relevant brands.
Meanwhile, both of the major portals Yahoo!Xtra and MSN have rolled out new finance sections, though each one is taking a slightly different approach. The Yahoo!Xtra offering http://nz.finance.yahoo.com/ provides comprehensive local and international market coverage. Using user generated content it aims to create a two-way dialogue with business readers.
MSN are taking on the challenge of improving consumers financial literacy. MSN Money http://money.msn.co.nz/ mixes commentary from local financial experts with helpful information and planning tools. The aim of this personal finance website is to help Kiwis take better control of their finances.
So where does this leave the other business and finance sites? Well the NBR have carried out a timely refresh of their site www.nbr.co.nz. They have a loyal audience of over 12,000 unique browsers per month and their editorial access to the niche business audience is unsurpassed. The National Business Review’s total offering is now fairly impressive with a bi-monthly magazine, weekly newspaper, daily e-mail and live website.
Rounding out the market are two well established financial information sites. Direct Broking www.directbroking.co.nz have a very good advertising offering and access to 50,000 active day traders while Findata.co.nz http://www.findata.co.nz, a 12 year veteran in online market information, serves millions of pages of financial charts abd news each month.
360interactive says: Apart from the MSN personal finance offering which may appeal more to general consumers, these sites will cater for a similar audience profile; predominantly males, 40+, income over 150k with investments.
It’s great to have so many options to reach this target who are after all, high consumers of online media. We will be looking to see what impact the increase in inventory has on rates and the availability of premium positions.
APN’s Ad Innovations Continue to Impres. Published July 2008
While many of the larger sites are focused on expanding their business content, APN have steadily expanded their advertising offerings (in ways we can only approve of).
It seems that each month the team in Albert Street roll out something new which serves to advance their online leadership position.
Here are some recent examples:
Contextual Advertising: What’s that now? Well on nzherald.co.nz you can now choose to have your display ads appear when certain keywords appear in stories. That’s contextual targeting. Studies have shown that consumers have a heightened recall of context sensitive adverts versus non specific placements. We like the fact that this type of placement is available for display ads (haven’t the search guys been doing this for years?) though some caution is required to ensure the context of the story is neutral or positive rather than negative.
Marketplace Adverts: Marketplace Links were launched on NZ Herald at the end of May. Made up of a 50 x 50 static image and upo to 3 text links , marketplace links are designed to drive direct response. There are six placements available, which run at the bottom of all story pages on nzherald. An example the layout can be found here: nzherald Marketplace links. They are sold as fixed positions from Monday to Sunday. We have an introductory offer rate if you are interested john@360interactive.co.nz
Relevant Offers: Almost a combination of the above innovations, Relevant Offers allow you to use image and text links to reach a targeted audience. Triggered by keywords, the textlinks are served at the bottom of stories that include your pre-specified keywords. Relevant Offers are made up of a static image and text links
Behavioural targeting: Alows ads to be served to users according to which sections of a site they have visited – meaning each page impression may be received by a more relevant audience. Behavioural targeting is available for the Business, Travel, Entertainment and Motoring sections on nzherald.co.nz. It works by displaying your adverts in a predefined sequence which is based on knowledge of visitor behaviour. This form of ad delivery can increase the effectiveness of campaigns.
Talk to John or Rebecca to find out more about APN advertising.john@360interactive.co.nz rebecca@360interactive.co.nz
Meet Flossie, the brand new Spice Girl! Published July 2008
In a recent post we compared female targeted sites to members of that great British institution The Spice Girls. In good spirit, NZ Girl have come back with a couple more reasons why they are like Posh Spice.
Like Mrs Beckham, they have successfully monetised their brand.
Like Mrs. Beckam, they have taken that brand into new markets.
And I have to say, like Mrs. Beckham the NZ Girl crew are shrewd business people who don’t sit back and let things happen to them.
They are behind the September launch of the next big leap in female oriented publishing – Flossie.com
What is Flossie.com?
It is a female-centric network of sites with a core target of females 18-55
It will bring together the ‘best of the best’ female focused websites into a network; nzgirl will be one of these sites
From the Flossie home and category pages we’ll be driving traffic to these sites – providing visibility to both consumers and advertisers of the ‘long tail’ of the internet
The Flossie network also acts as a media buying platform – providing advertisers with a easy-to-use, single point of contact that reaches as many women online as possible via a number of well-targeted websites Flossie.com will allow advertisers to reach between 100,000 and 160,000 women a week, putting it into a similar league as Woman’s Day (print) and Desperate Housewives (TV).
The Flossie.com brand will soon be rolled out to Australia and Singapore
So there you have it – Posh Spice and NZ Girl – intent on global domination.
Research – The Magnifying Effect. Published June 2008
Research is like a magnifying glass. When used correctly it can provide clear insight; when used badly, it can burn you.Nielsen Online has launched two enhancements to their measurement tools which (if used wisely) can greatly enhance your online planning.First up I want to mention Ad Relevance. This tool (which went live in the U.S. in 2003 and Australia in 2005; here, last year) gives subscribers the ability to view banner ads from over 500 local websites.
You can view all the creative that has run on the local web since August 2007. It also estimates the
impressions each campaign recieved and tells you which sites it ran on and when. This type of information means we can assess the market size of online advertising categories and plan campaigns more efficiently.
Described by one client as “Chong on steroids” it makes an already accountable medium even more transparent.
Talk to us if you are interested in exploring the potential of this tool. john@360interactive.co.nz
What We Learned at Google School. Published June 2008
The 360interactive team recently headed off for two days training at “Google School” to start the process of becoming a Google Certified Agency.
Search engine marketing is all about the detail and the Google training itself was comprehensive. Attendees were able to prepare by going through the 90+ online tutorials at the learning centre but the final two hour exam was pretty scary.
It’s not just me saying that. I believe longer term Google employees get the jitters too as they have to take the exam frequently to keep on top of the information.
Of course there are other search providers out there. Yahoo and MSN can access more than 15 million search pages in NZ and they are carrying out agency briefings on S.E.M. in the coming weeks.
So if you have any questions about search, please feel free to ask. We will try to keep the acronyms to the bare minimum.
Search Marketing – Yahoo and MSN co-operate. Published June 2008Mention search engine marketing to most marketers and they will automatically think of Google – and on the whole, they would be right to. However even while their overseas parents consider buyout offers and rejections of buy out offers, Yahoo and Microsoft are presenting a united front on their search engine alternative in New Zealand. Google dominates the market here with an (estimated) 90% share of search revenue but the YSM option is worth adding to the mix.
It’s key features are:
* All YSM Sponsored Search campaigns run on a Cost Per Click (CPC) basis.
* You only pay for the clicks you receive!
* Target NZ eyeballs only, target specific NZ geographic regions or the entire Australia & NZ audience.
* All campaigns will run across the entire YSM NZ network (includes MSN’s Windows Live Search and Yahoo Search)
* Campaigns will be managed by Yahoo! Search Marketing experts based in Auckland and Sydney.
* Bid on position are based in AUD$. Invoicing for the previous month’s activity in AUD$. Minimum account commitment of A$1,000 to be spent over any time period.
* Convert and upload 3rd party search marketing campaigns in two quick steps and enjoy full market coverage, ie. Convert your current Google SEM campaign directly into the YSM platform.
If you would like us to look at a plan for your search engine marketing please contact us today. E-mail John
or Rebecca on john@360interactive.co.nz or Rebecca@360interactive.co.nz
Online Advertising Symposium 2008 Published August 2008
On the 17th of July we attended the Online Advertising Symposium along with over 350 other marketers and advertising professionals.
If you weren’t able to make it – here are the potted highlights.
The Introduction – John Schofield, head of the Internet Bureau outlined the three purposes of the event 1. to help grow online advertsing in New Zealand; 2. to get us to think about how we can benefit from a lack of borders in the global space and finally to inspire us about digital advertising.
The Ministerial Sermon – David Cunliffe – minister for communications and information technology, got us excited about how much Labour had pushed those big old Telcos into giving us a broadband backbone we could be proud of (soon). He also stated that 92% of all NZ’s internet traffic went offshore, a point that went unchallenged all day by the brains trust in the audience (most of whom reckon “its only 60%”).
The keynote speaker – Claudia Batten – Former Wellington Lawyer, now NY/LA based Director of Partner Development for Massive (the in game advertising company which she sold to Microsoft in 2006) – inspired us to all want to start up an in game advertising company and sell it to Microsoft. Her enthusiasm for the potential of global online advertising burst through frequently – even though she has been doing this stuff for years.
Best Laugh of the Day – From Google Engineer Shyam Govardham – dropped into the last speaking spot of the day (before drinks) Shyam attempted to describe the inner workings of a successful ajax based, gadget filled website with mapplets, xml and embedded video channels. While technically rich I believe even the propeller heads protested when Shyam attempted to take us through the source code on PowerPoint. All good natured though.
As for the rest of the speakers – a picture is worth a thousand words but a video is even better. Click here to visit the Internet Bureau site and see the actual recordings of each address.
BTW, a special shoutout goes to the now ex-Internet Bureau staff member Alisa Higgins for bringing the event together so well.
Yahoo!Xtra comes back into the measurement fold. Published July 2008
A short statement from Nielsen Online heralded the return of Yahoo!Xtra into NetRatings, New Zealand’s internet industry-supported audience measurement auditing service.
In the release, Ivan Fuyala, Commrcial Director of Nielsen Online said “Yahoo!Xtra’s decision to be audited by Nielsen Online will allow agencies, publishers and other participants in the local internet market to identify the volumes, characteristics and behavioural patterns of the Yahoo!Xtra online audience.” He also correctly noted that “with the massive growth we are seeing in online advertising spend, delivering robust data to satisfy marketing professionals and agency requirements is critical.”
We agree entirely. Yahoo!Xtra’s reasons for staying out of the survey may have been internationally mandated but it seemed strange for them to be absent. Their non appearance on figures in Nielsen would not have benefited them or the agencies who use Nielsen online to plan for clients.
One wonders how much convincing the overseas bosses needed to allow this move from Comscore. On their first week back the local team were very happy with their rankings:
#1 Content site in NZ
#1 Publisher homepage
#1 Portal, ISPs and Telcos site
#2 in Search
#2 Lifestyle site
#2 Weather site
#3 General News site
#3 Sports site
#4 Commercial business site
