This is continuing coverage of the nextMEDIA conference in Toronto. To find all the posts related to nextMEDIA, check out Splashpress’ Blog
The third session of the first day was by Robert Jenkyn, the VP of On Demand Media. They consider themselves media experts, and have customers like Telus, WestJet, Best Buy and Futureshop.
Robert was quick to point out that with advertising online, most companies are beyond the point of asking themselves “if” they should enter the space, but instead are saying “how much?”
They want to know how much time, money and resources they should be investing into the ever growing market of web users in the world.
In Canada alone, eighty-two percent of adults have Internet access, and out of an audience of nearly fourty million, half use the Internet, every single day. Canadians spend more time online than reading books, magazines, watching television or listening to the radio.
And what’s great about all this is that it is highly measurable with things like impressions, clicks, sales, rich media interactions, and brand awareness.
Robert said that what web publishers and content producers need to deliver to get advertisers interested is information like their audience composition, niche, ad inventory, and create valued editorial environments.
He brings up two studies in his talk, and the more compelling one to me was their Telus example. Telus is a cellular service provider in Canada and is one of the top three companies in its niche.
Recently, there was a shift in the legal requirements of cell phone companies to allow consumers to bring their number from one carrier to another, rather than having to sign up for a new number with each carrier.
On this day, Telus made it a point to advertise all over every Google property, including YouTube, targeting Canadian consumers, welcoming them to Telus with the telephone number they valued so much.
They used multiple advertisement formats, on every site they could afford, and tracked the awareness, web traffic and reach of their message.
Once bloggers noticed that Telus was buying up all the advertising spaces on Google owned sites, they began to write their own reports about Telus, and what it was doing, further expanding the reach of their idea.
Over the course of twenty-four hours, Telus received fifteen million unique visitors, which accounted for over 64% of all Canadians online during that day.
They continued to receive traffic that ballooned to a 250% increase for the month, and they found their visitors were much more likely than regular search traffic to view multiple pages on their website.
Telus concluded that this advertising was much more effective and cost effective than either a television roadblock or full page ad on all major daily newspapers.
Robert definitely made it look like companies are waking up to the value, cost effectiveness, and reach of the web.
thx
yes please