Ninemsn's View

I recently spoke at the IAB/AIMIA 9th Annual Future of Digital Advertising Event. The event gave me a chance to organise my thoughts around what 2012 really looks like for ninemsn and our advertisers. I want to highlight some of these thoughts with you in this two part series.

There are parts of the Federal Government’s Converged Media Review that I find deeply scary. And what’s just as concerning is the fact that some very influential people in our industry don’t seem to be following it closely.

The interim report released in December says new digital media operators should face the same regulatory framework as traditional media outlets, and suggests introducing a new “super-regulator” and Australian content quotas.

The review has been slanted as an attempt to bring the regulatory regime up to speed with the technological advances in the digital industry, and addressing the overlap between different types of media. As a ‘converged media outlet’ by definition, the review is something ninemsn believes to be vitally important.

Over the years, we’ve spent a lot of time tracking how shoppers journey from the research phase through to post-purchase. But there’s been less focus on uncovering why consumers behave the way they do during the shopper journey. So, we decided to work with IPSOS OTX to dig a little deeper. We wanted to chart the decisions that drive consumers’ behavior as they travel along the purchase path and then uncover the emotional and functional triggers driving these decisions. What we found: Brands can use digital channels to respond to these triggers and actually shift decisions at key moments in the journey.

Recently there was a headline in an industry magazine that accidentally quoted me as saying "Digital is too hyped".

At this year's Digital Marketing Summit, ninemsn officially launched the Microsoft Advertising Exchange, the first premium, real-time bidding enabled (RTB) advertising exchange in Australia. The arrival of the Microsoft Advertising Exchange will put the control into the hands of marketers and be a game changer in the Australian media industry. With the introduction of RTB, data-driven marketing is at a point where an advertiser can for the first time deliver their target audience; the right message, at the right time, in a brand safe premium environment.

I believe that we are on the cusp of the next phase of digital advertising in Australia, a phase where digital can really start to deliver on the promise of marketing. We are reaching new levels of understanding about the audience and this is changing the way that we market like never before. What if we could make sure that each advertising message reached only the audience it was designed for? That your price campaign only reached those customers that are genuinely price sensitive. Or your retention campaign reached only your at risk segments?

• 7.7 million or 49% of online Australians have made a purchase online in the last 3 months. In the last year the number of Australians regularly shopping online has increased 40% (7.7 million 2011 vs. 5.5 million 2010).*
• Australians are expected to spend around $16 billion shopping online this year; 77% of which will be spent locally. Over the next 12 months online shopping expenditure is forecast to increase by 16% to $18.4 billion.**
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The IAB recently proved that online advertising should be considered as part of the marketing mix for retail and FMCG campaigns by demonstrating that online display advertising impacts not only brand measures but actual conversion to in-store sales.

Several IAB publishers, including ninemsn, partnered with OMD, Johnson and Johnson and research company Nielsen Online on a significant research study to measure the effectiveness of a digital only advertising campaign to launch a new mouthwash product called Listerine Zero. A test campaign was set up where advertising support was limited to NSW and online only activity to measure the impact of the campaign on brand effectiveness and sales for the product by comparing test stores in NSW with control stores in another market.

The reason people go out to the cinema is to watch movies.
This was an assumption I was pretty comfortable with as we embarked on a redesign - that would become a complete rethink - of MovieFIX, ninemsn’s long running movie destination.
Was it so ignorant of me to assume our audience would commonlydecide what movie they wanted to see based on a review, trailer or ad; then go to a movie site to look up screening times; and then go see that movie? Seemingly yes. In the early stages of the MovieFIX redesign project we were given research undertaken by our friends at Channel Nine surveying 800 casual moviegoers. One of many charts in the report stood out to me. It suggested that within the key MovieFIX demographic of late teens and early 20s, more than a third were going to a movie “because someone I know wanted to watch it”.