Asian e-Marketing November 2010 by MediaBUZZ Pte Ltd

November 2010

Search Marketing

Customers Lead the Way into 2011, page 19

Mobile Search - An Introduction, page 21

e-Dialog: Data Needs to Be in Every Marketerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s DNA, page 36

EDITORIAL:

O N L I N E

V E R S I O N

Dear Reader, According to surveys, Search Engine Marketing and Optimization will remain one of the hottest topics in 2011 and Asian e-Marketing will give you a head start by focusing on this issue in the edition at hand. It’s growing popularity, as well as effectiveness, increases steadily due to the fact that there is already a strong desire to act on the part of the people who use search engines. People use these nifty online tools because they want something, therefore the chances that people act and purchase when they see what they are looking for at the right time are pretty high. So do look at our best practices and analysis on Yahoo, Google, Experian, e-Dialog, MMA, and others to get a competitive edge. In 2011 MediaBUZZ will be Econsultancy’s local point of contact for their business in the region. The London and New York based company offers training and strategic consulting in the field of digital marketing, so if you are interested in their services or want to explore opportunities to work with Econsultancy in Asia as a trainer, vendor, consultant, or media partner, please get in touch with Alex Shaida by sending a message to alex.shaida@econsultancy.com or to asia@econsultancy.com.

Daniela La Marca Editor-in-Chief Asian eMarketing

Last but not least, please take a look at the promised interview with Greg Stuart, the new CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), and Rohit Dadwal, MMA’s Managing Director for Asia Pacific, as they sheds some lights on the results of a recent survey that reported a surprisingly high level of mobile advertising acceptance in Asian markets. Signing off for now,

PS: If you couldn’t catch the previous issue of Asian e-Marketing here is another chance. Exclusive Sponsor of this Issue

NOVEMBER 2010

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

SEARCH MARKETING: RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

COMPANIES & CAMPAIGNS

e-Dialog: Data Needs to Be in Every Marketer’s DNA

Why Asia is poised to be THE breakthrough market for Mobile Advertising

Microsoft Truly Accelerates the “Beauty of the Web”

F1 Marketers Should Leverage Search Intelligence to Drive Their Brand Visibility Success Story for Google in China a Moot Point

LEGISLATION

Get Found, Whatever It Costs!

Google’s Privacy Lapses Jeopardizes its Squeaky-clean Image

Google’s Preview System ‘Quick View’: The Marketer’s Friend and Foe

BUZZWORD

Nearly Half of Asia Seems to Feel Weighed Down by the Flood of Emails and Social Networks

Net Neutrality

APPOINTMENTS

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

IMPRINT

Customers Lead the Way into 2011

Mobile Search - An Introduction

Pay-Per-Click Campaigns: The Right Investment or Not?

How to Run an Effective Search Engine Campaign

How to Get the Most Out of Google AdWords

TECHNOLOGIES & PRODUCTS

Paid Search Marketing More Vibrant Than Ever

Competitive Real-time Price Comparisons for Paid Search has Arrived

Experian Hitwise Search Intelligence Service for Hong Kong Recognizes Traditional Chinese Characters

ADVERTISE WITH US! Just take a look!

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Why Asia is poised to be THE breakthrough market for Mobile Advertising Mobile Marketing Association’s new Chief Executive Officer, Greg Stuart, was recently in Singapore, and Asian e-Marketing held an interview with him, together with our well-known expert on the Asian mobile scene, Rohit Dadwal, MMA’s Managing Director for Asia Pacific. Having received some fresh results that day from a survey conducted by InMobi in partnership with comScore, which revealed a surprisingly high level of mobile advertising acceptance in Asian markets, I couldn’t resist making use of this opportunity to ask these highprofile interviewees questions about the good news for mobile advertisers - especially as we know the region’s potential still seems to be virtually untapped.

There is also a social/economic factor: it barely costs you anything to get information and you don’t want to be left out of information you had never had access to earlier. From a business point of view, marketers are now all of a sudden finding new users they couldn’t talk to earlier and are trying to send personalized and targeted messages to their new audience by using new media. It is now, for instance, possible to send you a message saying “Daniela, you are on Duxton Road, would you want to have a beer on your way back home?” which is location based marketing and much more appealing to consumers as its relevance really generates interest.

Q: According to the recent study, almost 70 % of Asians were comfortable with mobile advertising and more than 50% were ready for customised/ personalised advertising. Could you give me your thoughts on why that probably is so?

Greg Stuart: Indeed, the mobile phone presents a new opportunity for marketers to communicate to consumers and the fact that it has location and proximity provides a whole new dimension. Today’s consumers at a very basic level understand there is a quid pro quo. They are used to being exposed to ads, if they get free content or free media in return. As long as media doesn’t start to do stuff that is offensive, intrusive, or irritating, they are in general OK with the concept.

Rohit Dadwal: That is because the nature of the device being personal, targeted and actually providing you with information at the contextual time and the place that you want, which is what consumers want. Many Asian consumers actually have not had that Marketing 101 experience, simply because the addresses and postal codes were not always there.

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Q: That in accordance with the research which states that around 50% of mobile users in Asia seem to be willing to receive advertising in return for free apps or a lower phone bill. Do you think that this is the business model of the future? Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the way to go for the mobile advertising industry in the region and globally? Rohit Dadwal: That number actually points to the economic and demographic frame of the markets that we are in, which is huge and as much as 15% of the household income can be spent on a mobile phone and services in most of these markets. That eats into education, health care and food and maybe even housing a little bit. If that can be supplemented with free ads that can reduce the cost from say 15% to 12%, why would you not want it? Remember, these are the masses who are the next one billion customers. If they can reduce their cost by 2%, by receiving free advertisements, they will do it. Consumers want advertising on a medium like mobile, because it becomes targeted and personal. They get more relevant information, which is not a spill-over from a brandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective. However, it also becomes more risky, because

if you start sending something which is not truly personalized - it may turn people off. In the Internet business it was pop ups that clearly were wrong for the industry and we will step in to work to stop offensive pop ups that annoy consumers on their mobiles as we think it is bad for consumer experience, too. Greg Stuart: For emerging markets this will definitely play a more active role as we move forward, and we have not even explored voice advertising yet. Mobile is and was actually meant for voice and all these things that we are talking about are additional services. We have not even touched voice advertising, yet. If listening to jingles can reduce the cost of my phone call to almost zero, I will want that. And probably my jingle already knows who I am and knows from a demographic perspective what segment I am in. Thus, customers will feel less disturbed due to more relevance. How brands start tailoring their messages and communication strategies must become very specific. Q: Given that the Asian consumers are receptive to mobile ads, there is great potential for growth in the market here. What impact do you expect will it have on the operations and expectations of MMA?

Rohit Dadwal: More people at the table means more resources for the MMA to do more work to help develop that market place. It makes it a much more exciting, much more vibrant place. With our growing industry there is reason to believe there should be some kind of regulation in that field, be it selfregulated or enforced. Regulation requires wise guidance and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really what we are doing. We are helping build a framework under which the industry needs to work. We at MMA believe that it needs to be self-regulated; we believe all of our members will sign up with us and then adhere to the guidelines and practices that we are working on, the consumer best practices, the code of conduct, etc. We are also playing the role of quasiconsultant advisor to the regulators so that they understand that this is an industry which is growing and that there needs to be framework around the growth and enforcing

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Certain regions here are ahead of the curve and other markets lag behind. Therefore, we let the four regions do what is required to be done and then try and see similarities between all of them, so that we can actually have a global organization. What we are trying to do is to build a global medium for the increasingly global marketer.

the regulation as and when they have been framed. If you do not facilitate both ends of the industry which has at one end the regulators and the other end the consumers, there is the likelihood that one or the other may falter and that is not good for the industry. So you need to work at it from both sides. We also need to define what the consumers need to do, how they need to respect privacy for their own self. They need to be aware of what they can do to stop advertising, what they can do to entertain advertising, how they need to act based on that advertising, and so on and so forth; that it is not just the industry’s role. I think that collectively it’s both the regulator and the consumer who need to figure out how they interact with this and it will happen. We see ourselves as the facilitator to help make that happen. Greg Stuart: Rohit makes the decisions for Asia Pacific that are appropriate for these markets because his dynamics are not going to be the same as in other markets. Part of my role is to figure out the consistency that we can bring to enable him to do more, more quickly and more efficiently. I think the lifecycle of the regions we operate in are quite different.

Rohit Dadwal: I think it’s very true, mobile is a bigger deal here and there has been more development. It’s always good to keep an eye on what is happening in the other regions. There are developments in voice, for example, that are happening in Latin America and Africa that I am keeping a very close eye on to see how that could come to Asia. I am sure, that my counterparts in Europe or the US are doing the same. Q: How do you expect mobile technology to evolve in the future and what impact can we expect it will have on the mobile marketing industry? Greg Stuart: Mobile is now in the position where the consumers are driving growth and where technology is always trying to catch up. There are applications and services, like Foursquare, that are being built just for mobile phones. The success of this one simple app was not technology - it was the growth in usage by hundreds of millions of Foursquare users that is now helping drive innovation. So the question is how do you add location recognition to that? How do you add pictures to that? How do you add YouTube to that? The technology is now trying to catch up with what consumers want and consumers are now driving what the technological innovations will be. Who could have predicted something

like Foursquare and what that means with all these new mash ups of other technologies used in new and different ways which are becoming really exciting? We need to start differentiating innovation from what is not innovation. If you say Foursquare is innovation then that’s wrong, that’s a service, that’s an HTML5 application service, which has been there for ten years. Well, it is not a technology innovation, but a new application of old stuff. Rohit Dadwal: I am not sure, for instance, if it is right to compare search the way we understand it to what search will be on mobile. Mobile search is trying to emulate what search is on the Internet, but with definite variations - directory listings, content/location based search and so on. So is mobile search going to be the same to what it is on the Internet? I don’t think so, because it has already started fragmenting into different versions of directory versus location versus the traditional search versus Q&A searches. For example, you can actually do a search based on your camera, but will that become the biggest search tool as we move forward on the mobile? I am not sure. Will it be location based? Could be. Pairing reality with augmented location with content for mobile search, will that be the next killer app? Maybe. This it is not going to be the search that we know of, because this device has capabilities to take search to a whole new level compared to the PC. Q: Considering that the mobile search market is still relatively immature, which of the services do you believe has the potential to become successful, and why?

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

It’s all being driven on search and is being tagged into “If I am getting it here for this price, what is it sold for at Tesco and what will it be sold for at that other place?” That is search capability: scan the code, go into the Internet, browse it, find the cheapest price, and then go there and save $50. Greg Stuart: I would look at just my own behavior and guess that at least 50% of the searches on my phone are proximity related or have an element of proximity. I am trying to find a restaurant or retail store that is near me, or I am trying to identify where I am or where I need to get to – I think it’s the vast majority of what I am trying to look for. It probably is higher than that (50%) when I think about it and that is a big change. In retail shops like WalMart you could use your mobile phone for orientation to figure out where to find a product or get information on it.

Rohit Dadwal: I think there is a whole new layer of services that sort of get entered into here. We talked about Foursquare’s service but I know Procter & Gamble’s Olay did an application that works while you are standing in a retail aisle in front of their Olay products by providing a series of questions and answers that you go through to help identify which of their products is right for you. I don’t know if I would ever take the time to sit in front of my PC and identify a series of Olay products and then relate that to a retail experience, but if I am in the retail experience and I

have the question and I have the need then and there to solve that, this is a big opportunity to do so. It feels to me like a very powerful idea and one that retail is not able to support yet, because there is no one within a pharmacy or drug store that really has the range of specific knowledge, in particular for Olay products. It’s a very powerful idea and that feels like search to me - it is a variation of a Google, but it is still definitely a search. Did you see that Google announced that they have over $1 billion dollars in mobile revenues? They did not qualify whether that was application, platform, or advertising. They just said mobile, without sorting out the income streams. So, it is a pretty big deal and certainly has got everyone’s attention, which makes it a pivotal moment for mobile.♦ By Daniela La Marca

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

F1 Marketers Should Leverage Search Intelligence to Drive Their Brand Visibility Formula 1 (F1) recently crowned the German, Sebastian Vettel, of the RedBull team as their new champion, but Asian e-Marketing is not putting the race itself into the limelight as we will instead focus on e-marketing campaigns.

users in the run up of the event. Coupled with search clicks for F1 at 22% and Formula 1 at 3%, this leads to the conclusion that marketers of Formula 1-related brands should definitely work on their brand’s visibility in the local market.

Prior to the Singapore Grand Prix 2010, Experian Hitwise, a leading online competitive intelligence service, released data of a study that revealed the need for F1 brands to better drive their online marketing.

A comparison of search data between 2009 and 2010 reveals that Singapore Internet users seem to favour using the term F1 over Formula 1 when searching for event-related information online. In addition, Singaporeans seem to be most preoccupied with F1 about three weeks prior to the event. This is then followed by a dip in searches before a peak during the actual event (See Figures 1 and 2)

Overall, it seems that F1 is not a key area of interest for Singaporeans, with searches for ‘F1’ only placing 127th among other search terms made by Singapore Internet

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS Figure 1: Search term share of traffic in 2010

Source: Experian Hitwise Singapore (September 2010)

While terms like F1 and Formula 1 are top of mind for Singapore Internet users around the topic of motorsports, Experian Hitwise also found that key sponsor brands and F1-related brands including Singapore Tourism Board, Redbull, Johnnie Walker, and Shell did not turn up among search terms relating to motorsports. “Marketing for brands associated with niche events like F1 is a tough business, as getting the right timelines for campaigns and reaching out to the right target audience through the right channels are factors that could make or break any online marketing campaign,” said Graeme Beardsell, Managing Director for South Asia, Experian. “We believe that F1 marketers, in order to achieve marketing success and improve advertising effectiveness per dollar spent, need to market forward with predictive insights from existing trends to improve audience engagement in the digital media space.” Figure 3:

Figure 2: Search term share of traffic in 2009

Source: Experian Hitwise Singapore (September 2010)

Formula 1 global websites continue to capture the interest of Singapore Internet users Singapore Internet users continue to visit global sites over local sites when they search for information around Formula 1, with only two of the top ten popular motorsports websites being from Singapore. While it is no surprise that the global Formula 1 site tops the list of most popular websites relating to motorsports, representing 30% of visits, it is interesting that the Singapore Formula 1 site sees a progressive increase in popularity during the weeks preceding the local event taking 11% of visits (See Figure 3). The popularity of the Singapore site, as compared to ESPN (10%), The Official Moto GP Website (7%) and Autosport.com (6%), represents a clear opportunity for F1 marketers to focus their efforts and reach out to their target audience through a local channel with locally relevant marketing campaigns to drive interest around the event, as well as increase visibility for their brands.

Source: Experian Hitwise Singapore (September 2010)

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

The interests of Singaporeans around Formula 1 also seems to be heavily influenced by the other F1 races happening around the world, evidenced by a 5% increase in upstream searches on Google between the weeks ending 21 August and 28 August, the latter timeframe being the Formula 1 race weekend in Belgium at Spa-Francorchamps, a popular track among F1 fans. “When planning competitive online marketing strategies, F1 marketers need to be aware of both local and overseas trends that influence the search patterns of Singapore’s Internet users,” said Graeme. “In order to successfully leverage the online medium as a channel to increase sales and gain visibility with their target audience, marketers need to recognize the importance of

leveraging existing customer data and tracking industry trends that influence their brands, to gain and maintain a strong online presence.” Search and social networks take the lion’s share in Singapore In the weeks leading up to the F1 event in Singapore, search engines and social networks maintained their popularity among Singapore Internet users, with Google Singapore driving the bulk of upstream traffic to F1-related websites in the weeks ending 4 September (31%) and 11 September (35%). Meanwhile, social networking sites like Facebook continued to drive almost 8% of downstream traffic over the same timeframe (See Figures 4 and 5).

Figure 4:

Figure 5:

Source: Experian Hitwise Singapore (September 2010)

Given the visual nature of Formula 1, Singapore Internet users also seem to gravitate towards online video platforms like YouTube, with the global online video community being part of the top five downstream websites visited by Singaporeans in the weeks ending 4 September (5%) and 11 September (11%). “When armed with the right tools that provide intelligent and actionable information, marketers are empowered to successfully engage and influence the right target audience who are most likely to become loyal and vocal brand evangelists in the future,” said Graeme.

“With capabilities to help businesses convert data into insights, Experian Hitwise can play a vital role in helping F1 marketers identify opportunities to strategically conduct effective marketing campaigns, and help them maintain visibility among their target audience in an increasingly competitive environment where other brands are also vying for similar attention.”♦

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Success Story for Google in China a Moot It’s a moot question if there will be a good story for Google in China, according to Andreas Pouros, Chief Operating Officer at Greenlight, a leading independent search specialist marketing and technology firm. Maybe Eric Schmidt should have listened to Baidu Chairman, Robin Li, who gave Google’s chief the advice to spend at least six months a year in China to understand the market before launching its search service there. China has 420 million web users, with 99 percent of them using Baidu, so to no surprise the company’s net profit soars more than 100 percent year-onyear. Baidu’s net profit reportedly more than doubled in the third quarter, and its rival Google continued to lose market share following its public spat with Beijing over censorship. "Market conditions change every day. If you are not close, it is difficult for you to keep up" Li said and even

admitted that once, like Google, he considered moving Baidu to Hong Kong out of frustration with Internet censorship by Chinese officials. However, with a little bit patience and persistency it is possible to get along with the problem. And Baidu’s results show indeed that it continues to dominate the search engine landscape in China and even reported an increase in its advertiser base by almost 26% on 2009 levels, reaching 272,000 a clear sign of the deep gap in the paid search arena between the two leaders. But it has to be mentioned that Google has limited its searchable Web index to comply with China's censorship laws. Providing now fewer results means concurrently posting fewer advertisements as previously. Cyrine Amor, advertising analyst at Screen Digest, confirms as well that Google is losing market share due to the problems it has encountered lately with government. Moreover, Google is also about to end its contracts with seven adword resellers in China.

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Table: China - Search Engine Share of Paid Search Revenues

Source: Company reports, i-research, Screen Digest estimates

No reason has been provided for this but Ms. Amor says this will likely see Google’s share slashed by up to 10-12%. Screen Digest’s figures from earlier this year show Google accounted for 33% share of the Chinese search market, behind Baidu and indicated that almost two thirds of search users are happy to use Baidu or smaller Chinese search engines. In paid search, Baidu has been enjoying a healthy lead, estimated in early 2010 by Screen Digest to reach in China a total online advertising revenue of almost $1.5 billion in 2010, with Baidu accounting for the lion’s share ($945 million), then Google with $472 million. Has Baidu reached the tipping point with over 60% share of the search market in China?

Is it in the same situation Google had been in Western Europe, where it grew incredibly fast from 60%-90% so that it competitors couldn’t keep up? According to Andreas Pouros it probably has. He is certain that Google needs a new game plan to achieve the momentum required to catch a clear home grown market leader.♦ By Daniela La Marca

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Get Found, Whatever It Costs!

Search engine marketing gives you the unique chance to find customers in every phase of their purchasing cycle (the search, the price comparison and finally the purchase). Make sure that you provide relevant and detailed information about your products and services in your website. Internet users have a high opinion of vendors that offer detailed background information about their products. If you can offer them, in addition, a low price you’ll win, with the utmost probability, a new customer. Much research has already been done on various aspects of web usage and many more studies track the use of search engines and how users find information. It’s been proven that search engines are an important contact point for Internet users in every stage of the purchase decision process. More than half of Internet users prefer normal search result lists (algorithmic index) instead of paid text announcements or so-called sponsored links. Whether they click through would most likely depend on the content of their search enquiry. Almost two third of Internet users say they exploit search engines at the beginning of their search to receive an overview of offers on the Internet and one third use them mainly at the beginning of their search as well as shortly before their final purchase. Another interesting finding is that one third of the search engine users are convinced that suppliers who appear with several search enquiries of a product over and over again at the top of search results, are leading suppliers in this area. Unfortunately, another third assumes that these suppliers are rather expensive as they spend a lot of money for search engine advertisements.

If a supplier, whom a search engine user would have expected to find after a search enquiry, isn’t listed in the result, one third of the users take for granted that this supplier doesn’t have the article in stock. Some believe that this supplier is obviously not a leading supplier in this area, and others believe that the supplier has financial problems and therefore can’t run search engine advertisements. What this means for online vendors is that their products and services must be found. Be it by the use of generic search enquiries (e.g. mobiles), used mostly at the beginning of the search process, or by the use of specific search enquiries (e.g. iPhone4), used quite often shortly before the final purchase. Hence, even well-known brands must make sure that they are found through search engine marketing and in fact not only under their branding keywords, but also under general search words to leave no potential buyer to their competitors. Almost all search engine marketing studies emphasize how important it is for online vendors to be found by search engines in the index as well as in the text announcements. Depending on the contents of the search enquiry, the search engine user selects results from the index or from the sponsored links. It’s that simple, those who can’t be found in the results list don’t exist for potential online buyers. This applies to well-known brands as well, because if the user doesn’t find the vendor with his initial product search, he assumes that the supplier does not lead this product at all - even if it isn’t the case. So do consider well the advice given above!♦ By Daniela La Marca

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Google’s Preview System ‘Quick View’: The Marketer’s Friend and Foe After a period of testing in the USA, Google’s preview system, ‘Quick View’, has recently been popping up in the UK. When a search is conducted in Google, as well as being able to view the related search results, the searcher, whilst scrolling through each, is privy to a full miniature pop-up preview of the related website. According to search specialist marketing and technology firm Greenlight, when it comes to online marketing, advertising and visibility, this suddenly makes site design even more important to winning the click in both paid and natural search. “With Google ‘Quick View’, a negative reaction to a website could in itself prove costly not only to online advertisers but also to brands with an online presence”, says Jim Warren, Pay Per Click (PPC) Account Manager at Greenlight. “However, if they get the site design right, Google ‘Quick View’, were it to stay, could have a very positive impact.” Greenlight also points out the benefits for affiliate programs, particularly super-affiliates, pushing a single client product. Impact on Paid Search Previously, the design of a site would impact the conversion rate, but you could still generate the initial traffic to it. However, if a user can look at the overall design of a site before clicking, then suddenly a whole new set of parameters begin to become important in generating clicks.

For example colours, logo positions/size and site layout – these, points out Warren, are just some of the things that will need to be taken into consideration when building landing pages. If there are no suitable pages on a site, then building specific landing pages (that are flexible enough to test on), is by far the best way to go. “Google ‘Quick View’ could have an interesting impact on PPC, but knowing exactly what this impact will be is hard to predict”, says Warren. “However, you can be sure a negative reaction to a site layout or color design of a website in Google ‘Quick View’ would have an effect on online advertisers’ percentage click-through rates (CTRs), something they have not had to worry about in the past. This in turn would also result in a drop in Quality Score and an increase in cost per clicks (CPCs) as a result, not good news for sites with a poor user experience.” Greenlight does also say there could be a positive impact on brands with easily recognizable colours who may find they actually benefit from this new update, were it to go live. If they are the leading or most recognized player in their market, and a user is casually skimming the mouse over each site, then well-known colours will certainly help to pull a user in even if the ad copy does not contain the strongest offer in the search results (and especially if the other visible sites have less recognizable color schemes). Good news for Affiliates Interestingly, Greenlight points out Google’s preview system ‘Quick View’ could have an impact on affiliate

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

programs too, especially for superaffiliates or affiliates pushing a single client product. “At Greenlight, we are expecting to see a number of new PPC sites popping up with similar colours and layouts, in a bid to ‘trick’ a casual user into clicking on the affiliate PPC ad and drop that all important cookie,” says Warren. “Affiliates have always been ahead of the game in terms of finding techniques that work in PPC and the sensible affiliate manager will add into the program, terms and conditions that affiliate site design and colours must not mimic the original site they are promoting.” Impact on Search engine optimisation (SEO) Google ‘Quick View’ adds yet more functionality to the ever growing, feature packed results pages. Google Instant recently helped cut down those precious milliseconds it takes to type a full word in the search bar, so why then should users have to click back and forth between websites?

Does this mean that SEO consultants now need to dust off their copy of “Click Through and Conversion Rates for Dummies”? Well, these metrics should always be in the SEO’s mind, according to Greenlight’s Warren. However, he points out that were this new update to stay, they would certainly become more of a priority, not only because a web page will be visible in the search engine results pages (SERPs) but it could well represent a push for CTR in the algorithm. For example, a good quality site ranks 3rd for a search term and a low quality affiliate site ranks 1st. The affiliate site uses dynamic templates with content pulled from elsewhere on the web and no design considerations whatsoever. The high quality site has been tailor made to reflect the type of users it attracts and provides a unique service. To the average searcher using Google’s preview ‘Quick View’, it is clear the affiliate site does not provide what they need or at least does not catch their attention. However, the page ranking in 3rd seems to be of much higher quality and may actually be

what they are looking for. Google sees time and time again that previews of both results are viewed but the site in 3rd gets 90% of clicks – a clear sign it is what users are looking for. Another view may also highlight the need to get the correct page ranking for a given term. A hypothetical example - your homepage, it is already ranking for a competitive term such as ‘laptops’. Stick the keyword in the title and content and you quickly have a half decent page to build links to. That may be the case but the laptops category page has a big bright heading of ‘Laptop Sale’ and images of laptops – the homepage doesn’t. Given a preview of each page which one would you click on? Warren concludes: “If Google’s preview system ‘Quick View” is to stay, then the SEO game will, to an extent, change again. Another factor to consider and another area to optimize, but the core SEO principles stay the same as always.”♦ By Jim Warren, PPC Account Manager, Greenlight

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Nearly Half of Asia Seems to Feel Weighed Down by the Flood of Emails and Social Networks A survey carried out by Microsoft to glean insights into the social media habits of people across the AsiaPacific region has shown that nearly half of Asians feel weighed down with the deluge of information online. Nearly 3,000 people across eleven markets participated, including Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. The survey was conducted as Microsoft rolls out its new Hotmail, Messenger and Essentials, designed to help users ‘save their social energy’. Over 159 million Windows Live users in this region stand to benefit from a host of new features that will make sharing and communicating easier, faster and a lot more fun. “Technology is supposed to enrich our lives, not weigh us down. With this survey, we wanted to understand three things: how people are handling information in the digital world, why they might be feeling overwhelmed and how can we simplify their world. In essence, we want to show people how they can boost their “social energy”, by efficiently organizing their multiple social networks,” said Haresh Khoobchandani, Chief Marketing Officer for Microsoft’s Consumer & Online business in APAC.

Is it a popularity contest? Only a quarter of ‘friends’ on social networks are “close” On average, people in Asia-Pacific are active on at least three social networks. Interestingly, across the region, respondents estimated that only a quarter or less of the contacts on their 'friends' lists can be considered close friends. Despite this, over half of users do not regularly scrub their friends’ lists, although nearly a quarter does feel the need to do so. Thai users appear to be the most diligent with maintaining their social networks, with 70 percent of them claiming to 'scrub' theirs on a regular basis, while users in India, Japan and Singapore are seemingly least bothered with only 19, 24 and 25 percent respectively regularly maintaining their friend’s lists. Not surprising then, an overwhelming majority of respondents categorize half or less of the updates they receive on social networks as important and/or relevant. 32 percent of Japanese respondents, the highest number in the region, go as far as to claim that none of the updates they receive via social networks are important or relevant. That could explain why Japanese respondents seem to spend the least time on social networks, with 57 percent clocking in at an under an hour per day. Majority of people in other markets averaged one hour per day, although a significant number spend more than three hours.

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

“Managing multiple social networks means using unnecessary social energy, and aggregating information into one place definitely seems like the way forward. This is one key benefit that Windows Live Messenger offers through integration with popular sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and My Space,” said Gavin Tan, co-founder of the Save Social Energy Movement. Users are not on top of their emails; 20 unread emails at any given time Users appear to not just rely on one personal email account. The survey highlighted that Asian consumers have four or more personal email accounts on average, with Koreans showing a slightly higher trend where 51 percent of respondents have five or more. Managing this number of email accounts obviously takes up time, highlighting the need to consolidate or aggregate accounts. Furthermore, there seems to be a lot of room for improvement in how people manage their inboxes. On average, people have up to 20 unread emails in their inboxes at any given time, while 13 percent of respondents admitted to having upwards of 500 unread emails. One obvious cause for this is unsolicited email, a persistent issue across all

the countries surveyed, with 92 percent of respondents claiming to receive at least some form of it each day. While spamming remains an industry challenge, Microsoft is tackling this with a new set of junk mail filters that help keep spam at bay, something which 53 million Hotmail users in this region can take advantage of. When it comes to email management and organization, nearly 50 percent of users do not file away their personal email, with this number rising to 70 percent in Hong Kong which represents the highest in the region. "We recognize that people don’t file away personal emails, given that it’s time and effort consuming. We also know how annoying it can be operating with a mailbox that’s bursting at its seams. Given this, we’ve introduced new features in Hotmail, making it easier for users to sweep away clutter so that they can stay focused on mail that actually matters to them,” added Khoobchandani. For more information on saving social energy, please visit: http:// www.savesocialenergy.com/ Five tips for boosting social energy:

1. Get organized. Set aside some time to de-clutter your inbox and scrub your friends’ lists – it doesn’t take long and brings information that matters most to the fore. 2. Aggregate and consolidate. Use services like Windows Live Messenger to view activity across your social networks in one place. Connect your services so that posting one update is automatically replicated across all your social places. 3. Be selective. Reduce unwanted and irrelevant information by being more discerning about who you accept as a friend and which newsletters you sign up to. 4. Activate filters. Check the junk mail and spam filters from your email service provider and use the highest settings. It will stop some of the emails getting into your inbox in the first place. 5. Dig around. Take some time to uncover the free hidden gems that are available to you. For example, Windows Live SkyDrive is a free service that gives you your own storage folder online. This allows you to share pictures, files and videos with whomever you choose without having to email them.♦

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

Customers Lead the Way into 2011 In 2010, customers have continued to embrace a host of new technologies, applications and mobile devices and dictate how best and at which levels they prefer to communicate with companies. As the marketing landscape continues to evolve in 2011 and the channels for media consumption and delivery continue to proliferate, marketers need to consider combining in depth customer intelligence on an increasingly fragmented audience with the optimization of channels to engage with their target customers and strengthen their brands and product offerings. Optimizing the mobile platform According to the Radicati Group, consumers using their mobile phone for email are predicted to increase from 234 million users in 2010 to over 1.1 billion users globally in 2013 (“Wireless Email Market. 2009 – 2013, October 12, 2009). As more consumers use a host of mobile devices to obtain information on the go via email or other platforms, marketers need to pay attention to optimizing the mobile platform for success. Optimizing messages for reading on multiple devices: The recent growth of smart phone devices means consumers can now read emails via PC or mobile 24/7. This makes it critical to ensure that well-formatted content is delivered in a format which customers can easily access from a website when clicking on a link.

Personalized user experience and conversion optimization: Identifying customer segments that respond to your marketing campaigns and the channels they use to respond, is critical. Conversion optimization is a process that enables marketers to refine a website’s usability to help increase the conversion rate of sales, leads, email subscribers, downloads and other conversion points. This process is vital for online marketers today. Analyzing the new digital customer A customer’s propensity to respond to a type of offer through a specific channel is not static, and the changes in consumer tastes and preferences will continue to evolve. Responsiveness is entirely dependent on the customer’s lifecycle, not the marketer’s. While the increasing popularity of digital channels gives marketers the power to follow-up with new messaging based on previous behavior, campaigns cannot be executed without a marketing database that captures demographics, transactions and actual behavior. If marketers want their message to be relevant to the customer at the time of the campaign, analytics must progress to a near-real time function and provide insights needed to deliver effective, multichannel marketing and conversion optimization programs.

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

version rates of web visitors from ‘browsers’ to ‘customers’ is very low, with an average of 1-5% of traffic converting. In addition, half of the marketers surveyed spend 60% of their budget driving traffic to their website but fail to convert the traffic into users with 9 of 10 marketers not conducting conversion optimization to improve online sales. This reflects a lack of awareness by marketers around conversion optimization.

John Merakovsky

Multichannel marketing research Research from Experian to identify gaps between marketers’ expectations and actual consumer behavior shows that only 10% of consumers will click on a link from a mobile device, yet 61% will click on an email link through a PC. In addition, a high proportion of consumers are experiencing difficulties when viewing content via their mobile. This is a result of only 20% of marketers having adapted their web design/ programming changes to cater to m o b i l e d e v i c e s . Given the growth of mobile messaging, marketers must make it easy for a user to respond to the ‘call to action’. Both messages and WAP sites must be built with mobile Internet in mind. The call to action may also be in the physical world. Innovative marketers are embedding coupons and barcodes in MMS as a means of encouraging (and measuring) foot traffic generated from mobile messaging. As more marketers adapt their properties to the mobile Internet, consumers will learn to use mobile links thus expecting significant increases in conversion ratios. Conversion search

optimization

re-

According to a survey by Experian with marketers on their current and future plans for improving conversion rates on their websites, con-

The simplest changes within a webpage can result in orders of magnitude change in conversion ratios. Layouts, language, trust markers and speed of response are some of the key areas that marketers must focus on to ensure that the traffic generated results in conversion. For example, changing ‘free quote’ to ‘instant quote’ can increase conversion by 60%. The reason? Instant implies a machine-generated response, and not a pushy salesman. 2011 and Beyond – Creating value and loyal brand evangelists The key to a relationship of mutual value with a customer is through continuous relevance. And this can only happen if marketers understand their customers and communicate with customers on the basis of their understanding, measure the effectiveness of communication, and feed that back into the understanding of the customer. This re-

quires a single customer view, in the form of a multi-channel marketing database that is integrated with digital channels such as mobile and email to effect that communication in real-time. Business takes place in both interactive and bricks and mortar properties; having invested so much in these properties, businesses must maximize the traffic to these properties to achieve the greatest ROI. This means maximizing both the quantity and quality of retention and acquisition traffic, and using conversion optimization techniques to close the deal. In order to build a robust capability with an extensive range of indepth data, marketers need to choose a service provider that can provide the right technology platforms and expertise required to build and flexibly roll out effective marketing campaigns. In an increasingly digital marketing ecosystem that will dominate the marketing landscape in 2011, Experian’s expertise and focus on ROI and demonstrable business benefits, rather than simply functionality and price will enable marketers to unlock the power of data to anticipate market, client and program needs and opportunities, creating loyal and vocal brand evangelists.♦ By John Merakovsky, Director, Digital Marketing, Experian Asia Pacific

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

Mobile Search: An Introduction Mobile search is one of the most discussed topics in the mobile, Internet and advertising industries, and for good reason. As more people use their mobile phones to access content, information and entertainment, a search function becomes a vital tool for finding what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Mobile search is emerging as a major source of revenue and market-differentiation opportunities for mobile operators, marketers and content providers worldwide. By making it fast and convenient for mobile users to find information and content, mobile search has the potential to change the way consumers view their mobile devices. That creates revenue opportunities for mobile operators and their business partners by creating a perception among consumers that they can just as easily find and download content – such as songs – on their mobile phone as they can on a PC. Mobile search has the added advantage of encouraging and accommodating impulse buys. For example, if a consumer hears a new song and immediately wants it, she can use mobile search to find and download the MP3, rather than waiting until she’s at home in front a PC. The Internet clearly is an extremely efficient sales and marketing channel. Yet, many analysts predict that this success will be overshadowed by the mobile web. One reason is reach: There are more than five billion mobile devices in use worldwide today. The mobile web is becoming an increasingly popular way for consumers to go online when they’re away from their PCs or if they don’t own a PC. Additional market drivers include the always on and always available nature of mobile devices. That’s a major advantage over PCs, especially among consumers who spend most of their day away from home and thus away from a PC.

Mobile devices are a natural fit for marketing initiatives that include one-click call completion, where mobile users can be immediately connected to the company to learn more about or purchase a product. This ability is another example of how the whole concept of mobile search is centred around convenience and instant gratification. Mobile search has enormous potential, which can be measured in a variety of ways. For example, the installed and grown base of five billion-plus mobile users is already generating a significant amount of mobile search traffic even though many, if not most, of those users are still learning about mobile search. This usage is creating tremendous revenues through proven online search marketing models. It’s not a stretch to see analysts and investors giving members of the mobile search ecosystem valuations comparable to the Internet search world. How is Mobile Search Different from Internet Search? One fundamental difference between mobile search and Internet search is the form factors of the devices used. Even with QWERTY keyboards and increasingly common large screens, mobile devices still require search platforms designed to make it fast and convenient for users to find information and content on a handheld device. Internet search engines and strategies can’t be simply ported to the mobile environment. Instead, they have to be modified – often significantly – in order to accommodate device and network limitations. A second fundamental difference is the type of information sought. Internet users often seek comprehensive, lengthy information, such as material for a term paper, analyst reports on their company’s competition or

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

prices for flights and mortgages. By comparison, mobile users typically seek concise, actionable information, such as news headlines, sports scores, weather, movie times or a list of nearby hotels. Mobile users also increasingly seek ringtones, downloadable music and video clips, all of which must be organized in a way that makes it fast and convenient to find exactly what they want.

Multiple Players, Multiple Beneficiaries - Mobile search engines benefit wireless consumers, marketers and mobile operators by fostering a cycle where: 1) Consumers use search to find content, services or information. 2) Marketers present relevant products and services, and are willing to pay for traffic. 3) Search engines provide what consumers seek and consumers find what they are looking for. 4) Operators provide a useful consumer experience while enjoying new revenue streams. For example: Search Providers – Mobile search provides a way for search providers to continue serving consumers when they’re away from their PCs. In the process, search providers give their advertisers, content providers and other business partners a way to reach consumers anytime, anywhere. By expanding into mobile search, search providers can also expand their advertising revenue by placing ads in conjunction with mobile queries. Consumers – Mobile search provides consumers with a convenient

way to get actionable information, such as weather, and immediate gratification, such as song downloads. Mobile search can also leverage the location technologies (e.g. GPS) built into many phones to make search results even more focused and actionable. For example, with GPS, search results could go beyond just a list of nearby Italian restaurants to include turn-byturn directions to each one. Marketers – Search allows marketers to reach mobile users with offers that are highly relevant to their immediate interests. Although that sounds as obvious as it is, there’s more to this ability than is immediately apparent. For example, instead of hoping that consumers will remember something – such as a song they heard or a purse they saw – when they’re back home and in front of a PC, mobile search provides marketers with a way to serve those needs and wants on the spot. Put simply, mobile search gives marketers a way to provide instant gratification. Mobile Operators – Because they have major control over the applications, services, portals and menus that appear on their customers’ devices, mobile operators are ideally positioned to provide their customers with search tools that make it easy not only to find information and content, but also to spend money once they’ve found what they’re looking for. In the process, the mobile operator benefits in at least three ways: 1) additional revenue from data services; 2) the potential for royalties from content downloaded as the result of a search or from sponsored links; 3) reduced churn if the search tools are more convenient and sophisticated than what rival operators offer. Portals and Publishers – Mobile search gives Internet portals and publishers a way to serve consumers when they’re away from a PC. That additional reach can di-

Rohit Dadwal

rectly impact their bottom lines by, for example, driving additional sales and additional advertising revenue. These searches can be performed at the publisher’s own site or through the use of a third party’s search engine. Content Providers – Mobile search makes it convenient for consumers to find and use a wide variety of content anytime, anywhere. That benefits content providers because it increases their addressable market and revenue potential far beyond people who are in front of a TV or a PC. In the process, mobile search also gives content providers a way to sell into markets that have low PC and Internet penetration rates. With mobile search, consumers get what they are looking for, marketers find buyers for their goods and services, and mobile operators get additional revenue from data usage and, in some case, royalties. That’s why the mobile search ecosystem is one of the most efficient and powerful marketplaces in recent history. As mobile search matures, the market dynamics will improve even more, unlocking additional revenues for all members of the value chain.♦ By Rohit Dadwal, Managing Director, Mobile Marketing Association Asia Pacific Limited

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

Pay-Per-Click Campaigns: The Right Investment or Not? Pay-per-click (PPC) sounds like a great option, but what does it really cost and is it worth the effort and money?

makes PPC an extremely attractive option and one that business owners should not completely ignore as a potential marketing technique.

Each campaign is different, depending upon the bid amounts, the number of actual click throughs and the generated Return on Investment (ROI).

A huge number of tools have been developed to automatically monitor, bid and track your Return on Investment (ROI), craft your PPC ads, and help you to choose alternate keywords that may be just as effective but cost much less on the particular PPC search engine. Although there are hundreds of PPC search engines on the Internet, there is a core group of five to 10 PPC search engines that because of their size, brand name, and reputation are the preferred choices for most PPC ad campaigns. These major companies are now experimenting with many variations on the basic premise, including the ability to use PPC on a local basis, extending it from keywords to context and behavior of users, offering their versions of tools that help make the process easier - especially for novices, and decreasing the amount of time it takes to see results from your campaign from hours to just minutes.

This article intends to help guide you to make the best choices by offering free, totally unbiased reviews of PPC search engines and the tools designed to be used in conjunction with the PPC process - both to help you with understanding the process and to evaluate its usefulness for you as a marketing tool. It can be relatively easy and inexpensive to give PPC a try. PPC search engines offer all kinds of support and some are easier to use than others, but the opportunity to ensure a placement of your ad without necessarily investing a large amount of your marketing dollars,

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES The first step in putting together a PPC campaign is to decide on your budget and what level of risk you are willing to take as both will affect which PPC search engine you ultimately choose. As one would expect, the larger PPC service providers are less risky, since they already have excellent market coverage and tend to offer a lot of assistance to their users. On the other hand they are the most expensive in terms of the amount of money you must spend to acquire a top ranking, based on a specific keyword or group of keywords. Do also consider that there are plenty of free, independent tools available to help you in your research of keywords which will tell you the current bid price for certain words or phrases in the different PPC search engines. Once you have decided upon which PPC search engine you are going to use, you have to put together your ad and decide on the keywords you wish to have in your ad, register with the search engine, fill out the necessary information to open an account, and then begin the bidding process for the keywords you have decided upon. When you first register your keywords with the search engine you have chosen, you will also

specify the maximum amount you are willing to bid for those keywords. Once you've mastered the basics of PPC and have learned more about the options, tools, and search engines that offer this form of marketing, you will be in a position to fine tune your campaign and perhaps try some of the niche-market PPC search engines, which offer lower keyword costs and may be more suited to your product or service. Keep in mind that even companies with experience in online marketing struggle with the intricacies of the techniques needed to judge which PPC search engine to use and how best to play the bidding game. There is, sometimes, fierce competition for specific keyword(s) in a given PPC search engine. Most PPC search engines automate the bidding process for you (stopping of course when they reach the maximum bid you have indicated), but personal involvement and the judicious use of third-party tools by the user is advisable to ensure that the tracking mechanisms, built into the search engine's control panel, are in sync with what is actually happening.

The company that bids the highest amount of money for a specific keyword will be ranked first in the PPC results, the second-highest bidder will be ranked second, etc. PPC search engines, typically limit the number of PPC ads on a results page to less than 10, and research has shown that unless you are in the first three or four of the PPC ads, you are much less likely to be â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;clicked-onâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by visitors. Because the competition is so fierce in this market, most PPC search engines do not require you to invest a minimum amount of money in a campaign. In fact, some will even give you a nominal amount of money to start your campaign. Some may require a small deposit (around $25 to $50), but this money is then applied to your account. Make sure to check the fine print in the agreement to be clear on any required minimum deposits or about what would happen if you decide to cancel your campaign. Do be prepared to spend a fair amount of time, in the beginning, to monitor your campaign.â&#x2122;Ś By Daniela La Marca

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

How to Run an Effective Search Engine Campaign Understanding the basic structure of how search engines register Websites is crucial to succeed in search engine optimization (SEO). One of the most effective web site promotion techniques is to refer to improvements and changes made to web pages so that they conform to the search criteria utilized by search engines for rank and position listings, taking into consideration criteria such as keyword frequency, prominence, weight and proximity, plus keyword placement within the HTML script. They like "content rich" or thematic text (sufficient enough to support the primary keyword phrase) about your products/services. In general it is actually not necessary to submit a Website as search engines will find it sooner or later, but achieving a higher ranking means a lot of work. Often the optimization is an exercise performed by the search engine that determines how relevant the page is to a searcher's request, other times it is done by a firm specializing in search engine marketing.

The pay per placement engine market is a billion dollar industry and is a platform that requires so little set-up and capital investment that a multitude of firms have embraced it as a front-line marketing channel. But as more and more companies sign up, the click costs have increase to meet the demand. As with all other marketing tools this one isn’t without any pitfalls and obstacles, so you may wish to pay attention to the following advice:

• •

Understand your objectives - the first is to identify your website objectives and tailor your traffic to achieve them. Track your clicks - whether you own or adopt an advanced web analytics tool or simply add an affiliate code to the URLs submitted to the search engine you must make sure you track click activity against your objectives. This is such an important factor that even engines themselves are starting to offer this service recognizing that accounting for click to conversion is a sure way to measure success.

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

•

Choose the right search engine(s) - don't be mistaken in thinking that all engines are equal; some are all-rounders, some are B2B focused and some are B2C focused. Make sure you are aware of which one is most effective for you. Choose the right words make sure you take into account the selection of words and phrases you use. Writing 'killer' creative – firstly, drive more qualified traffic, and secondly, reduce the amount of irrelevant clicks. Make visitors qualify themselves before they even click the link by adding a call to action - such as buy, visit, compare, search - into your title and/or description which should prompt interest. Qualify them further with relevant descriptions that include enough information to whet their appetite, yet, at the same time provide enough information to persuade a user who is uncertain whether they should or should not visit your Website. Find out what buzz words your search engine recommends for your industry.

•

Manage your bids and placements - the biggest difference between paid search and any other type of search engine optimization is that you have to • bid for your position. Get to know the search engine distribution partners and where their listings are going. Actually, the number of options available for managing bids is extensive - from doing it manually to buying a service to • perform it for you. It is definitely the missing link to many paid search campaigns and can mean the difference between success and failure. Try to match conversion with costs and placement - can you get a better ROI from averaging in third position rather than first position? Be aware of seasonality - at peak times in your industry a lot of business can be achieved online, at the same time you can bet that a large number of your competitors will also be aware of this so make sure you watch your bids very carefully.

Don't be afraid to change creatively, you can make adjustments quickly to turn around for seasonal trends and demand. Choose the most appropriate landing page – just ask yourself the question when selecting the page “would you be happy if you'd searched for a product or service and then had to search for it a second time in the destination site?” Now that I have explained the process a little bit more in depth, please do use the information provided to help you plan your campaign or fine tune your current campaign to get the most from your marketing dollars. The pay-per-click search engine market is definitely a very competitive, efficient, and effective means of Internet marketing. Understanding this market should give you the ability to turn search into an extremely profitable channel.♦ By Daniela La Marca

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES

How to Get the Most Out of Google AdWords Google is the world's dominant search engine, with some 70% of the 1.2 billion daily searches, and AdWords is the world's biggest Internet advertising program that reaches 80% of the online population. Facts that should spark your interest in Google AdWords are the well known advantages of: 1. Paying for results only: Your ads appear for free, and you only pay when interested users click on your ads and go to your website. 2. Reaching a worldwide audience: Google's advertising network reaches more Internet users worldwide than any other ad network. 3. Control of advertising costs: There's no minimum spending requirement, and it’s possible to change the budget at any time. 4. Managing campaigns in real time: Ads for new products and promotions can be changed and campaigns started or stopped at anytime. As only clicks get paid, you have to consider many factors to attract the really interested buyer. The following are the most important tips and tricks from search engine experts who recommend:

•

Do not consider top positions only The top position is often too expensive for popular keywords. Companies usually want to be there for image reasons and are therefore willing to pay more than they recoup through orders received. The third position is often more profitable. Present keyword in the title. If possible, use the keyword in the ad title or at least in the ad text. Act with caution when using wild cards with standard texts. The entire ad and the landing page should be customized individually for each search term. Have an adequate landing page Each visitor who clicked on your ad, but left the page afterwards is a loss. Therefore design your landing page so that a prospective customer can immediately find what they expect. The same landing page cannot always be used for different search words. Test individually adapted landing pages compared to standard ones. Offer tangible benefits Keyword advertising gets a lot of interest as it promises a specific value or benefit. Terms such as "free", "complimentary", “gratis” or "tips" often increase the click rate.

BEST PRACTICES & STRATEGIES •

•

Don’t raise wrong expectations If you increase the clickthrough-rate (CTR) with terrific text, but in the end don’t give visitors what has been promised, they simply clickoff. Rather strive for objective and down-to-earth texts which may bring fewer clicks, but achieve a higher conversion rate. Combine several keywords Single search words are often expensive, therefore, more and more people combine keywords in their search, as it is usually cheaper than single word search. The Google Keyword-Tool can tell you what fits to your search term and how often it got looked-up: adwords.google.com. Many users also type in whole sentences, which can be booked easily as well. Include variations of your keywords Always remember that people search sites using all sorts of keywords. Ensuring your site is easy to find means including misspelled, capitalized and plural keywords. In addition, always include the longer forms of keywords, too. For example, use “domestication” as well as “domestic”.

•

Watch the competition Check out what keywords your competitors have posted and go to google.com/ sponsoredlinks, where you can find a complete overview of the booked ad text. Rare keywords are better Be pleased if you found keywords that have not yet been discovered by your competitors as it makes the bidder battle easier. Combine interesting words. It is cheaper to book many rarely requested search terms, instead of a few of the most wanted search terms. Limit target groups If you book a keyword, Google is generous and displays your ad even if it is not exactly the word that is searched for. The reason for this is the pre-setting “broad match”. If you really want to book only your keywords, then select "exact match” which usually saves money. If you only want to attract business people in the office, you can specify exactly that your ad is displayed only on weekdays between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. By now, audiences can even be defined by demographic criteria.

•

Cater to regions It’s a fact that people spend the most money in their immediate environment and noting that you are a provider from their region increases the relevance of your ads. Google offers a wide range of regions according to periphery as well as individually on a map and even allows selecting whether your address is displayed in the ad.

You may even want to take a look at some of the top tips and strategies used by Google AdWords specialists:

• • • •

Basic: Implement the 'musthave' AdWords optimization techniques. Intermediate: Take your advertising to the next level of performance. Advanced: Fine-tune your account for ongoing improvement. Take advantage of the tips and tricks offered to make your search advertising more effective. Combine interesting words. It is cheaper to book many rarely requested search terms, instead of a few of the most wanted.♦ By Daniela La Marca

â&#x20AC;&#x153;As only clicks get paid, you have to consider many factors to attract the really interested buyer.â&#x20AC;?

TECHNOLOGIES & PRODUCTS

Paid Search Marketing More Vibrant Than Ever Search, which has been around for more than a decade, is still a very vibrant marketing channel, giving us another reason to continue the series on Search Marketing with Ms. Margaret Chang, General Manager of Search Marketing for Yahoo! Southeast Asia. This time Asian e-Marketing intends to shed light on paid search marketing that, although it offers new ways for marketers to be found, continues to evolve in ways that present ongoing challenges for marketers as well. According to Margaret, paid search marketing is one of the most effective ways for a company to become more visible to potential customers, as by bidding on specific keywords related to the company or its product/service, a higher placement on search engine results pages can be achieved. Paid search is usually displayed as “Sponsor Results” or “Sponsored Links” on a results page and placed in a section of the page that is made to stand out with either different colors or enhanced text. When a user clicks on the ad, the marketers get charged a nominal fee for the referral, priced on an average of around $0.40 per click. “Of course this can sum up to a substantial amount, but it is the extra mile you have to go sometimes to push yourself ahead of your competitors. If you sell a popular product, it can be pretty tough to be among the top results listed when online shoppers start browsing on search engines”, she explains.

Studies do indeed prove that people hardly ever go beyond the top 30 results listed from a search. In fact, the top 30 results get over 90% of search traffic and the top 10 results receive nearly 80% more traffic than those in positions 11-30 achieve. This clearly demonstrates the importance of being highly visible when web users are searching for your type of product or service. “Paid searches can be a powerful, effective way for SMEs to generate more traffic to their websites, helping them to increase their online presence in a relatively short amount of time”, Margaret affirmed. Bidding on keywords is one of the most important steps in the paid search process as it determines an advertisement’s positioning in search results. Margaret explained: “The advertisements co-exist with the rest of the search results, which are relevant to your query. However, from the advertiser’s point of view, they fit keywords relevant to their service or product and they decide the budget. It can be for instance a monthly budget, but they can even tighten it to a daily budget. They can give each keyword a maximum bid price, which is whatever price that was agreed to, and Yahoo! can usually calculate the conversion as they know how many clicks will turn into a real transaction.” Yahoo! Sponsor Results are listings displayed in Yahoo! Search results that link to advertisements or websites for products or services. The words entered in the search box determine which listings are displayed.

TECHNOLOGIES & PRODUCTS

For example, if you search for florist, you will see Yahoo! Sponsored Results for websites that sell or provide information about flowers. Yahoo! determines which listings to display based on which are most relevant to your search and which are of most interest to people who have performed similar searches, while the marketer only pays after the appropriate ad/ website is clicked. “That’s the way the model works. We act like a matchmaking platform; on one side is the user who is searching for something to buy or to find information on, and on the other side is the advertiser who provides the service or product - we just match make the marketplace. Advertisers set the pricing, how much they want to pay, themselves, which should be based on their profit margin. That is the first generation of the model”, Margaret revealed. She continued: “The second generation of the model is in a way a little bit unfair, because big advertisers can always afford to spend more money and the paid search networks ranking system is based on how much the advertiser pays. Of course this is not in the users’ best interest because they always see these few ads and therefore another factor is relevance.

Regarded as more relevant are ads that get clicked more often, which gives smaller advertisers a chance as well to achieve a higher ranking. So it is a combination of different factors which decide where your ranking is at. It is for the benefit of users as well as Yahoo!, as it wants to provide the most relevant search results to its users. And due to the fact that Yahoo! always supplies them with the most relevant search results they want, users don’t see it as ads. That is the reason why this model is always so successful: it is part of the content users ask for and it works for us because when they find the search engine is good, they will keep coming back. Only if these two things work, it makes sense for advertisers to place their budget with us. It’s a win-win situation and relevance is of vital importance.” Compared to other forms of advertising, the return on investment is really high, the whole business model is very economical, and the marketing cycle is very efficient for advertisers, as they pay for performance only. Margaret states: “We feel that if you operate this marketing tool properly it’s more of a sales force to advertisers rather than a marketing tool, because in the end the traffic will turn into closed deals on your web site.”

Margaret even reported that some of her clients received such an overwhelming response that they stopped their campaign because of too many orders which they couldn’t process due to a lack of manpower. “I have seen with my own eyes that clients, who almost decided to close their business down, turned their business into three branch stores after a campaign with us. We saved them.” Margaret said. So if you want your ad to be displayed when someone searches for your product, you should be willing to pay every time someone clicks on your ad. It is as easy as that. Margaret is dealing with a lot of small business owners, who are probably the most difficult to please as each penny spent on advertising is coming out of their own pocket. They have to see results to be satisfied. It’s not like dealing with a marketing team of a big MNC that is spending just a part of their department’s huge marketing budget. 20,000 contented customers are certainly convincing evidence of Yahoo! Search Marketing’s effectiveness, so please do feel free to test their service as well.♦ By Daniela La Marca

TECHNOLOGIES & PRODUCTS

Competitive Real-time Price Comparisons for Paid Search has Arrived

For marketers and retailers alike, the greatest challenge is to ensure that their campaigns and paid search advertisements can transform instantly using 100% accurate information, while minimizing resources and maximizing ROI. Leading search marketing specialist and technology firm Greenlight recently released its real-time price comparison platform for paid search. The launch forms part of its latest upgrade to adapt™ their automated inventory management platform. “Having all the data needed to be visible in the right place, at the best price, is a mammoth task for retailers”, says Alicia Levy, Greenlight’s co-founder and director. Current bidding tools cannot cope with these multilayered business needs and demand an enormous amount of direct human input. The time spent bringing together the search specialist and Internet retailers/ marketers to translate their needs into practical steps, means the prospect is usually lost to the competition. So for retailers, a lack of real-time intelligence on their most competitive products can prove costly from both a campaign and financial perspective.

In a survey undertaken by Greenlight, 60% said they saw price as having the highest impact on a customer’s decision to buy. Over half said they would change their bidding strategies if they had insight on how price competitive they were against their competitors for the same product. Just 28% of retail respondents to Greenlight's survey said they put the price of products in their pay per click (PPC) ad copy; and of those who do, a huge 87% manage this process manually. adapt™ should enable retailers and marketers across multiple sectors to access, within seconds, 24/7 intelligence on competitor prices on like for like products, helping them to immediately identify and compare those products they are most competitive on, pricewise. This insight ensures they can build a paid search strategy focused on aggressively advertising their most competitively priced goods as opposed to pushing ‘price war losing’ ones. “It requires a huge investment of time and manpower and even then, once the process has been completed, the opportunity is often already lost. The development of adapt™ is a natural progression in finding a solution to one of the biggest problems in search.” said Levy.♦ By Ralph Leonard

TECHNOLOGIES & PRODUCTS

Experian Hitwise Search Intelligence Service for Hong Kong Recognizes Traditional Chinese Characters ExperianÂŽ just launched its Hitwise Search Intelligenceâ&#x201E;˘ service for the Hong Kong market. The service will help domestic and international marketers operating in Hong Kong improve their online marketing, content development, affiliate strategies and search tactics. Based on anonymous and aggregated search behavior of 1.8 million Hong Kong Internet users, the Hong Kong Search Intelligence service provides extensive insight into how people search for products and services in over 160 industries, across all major search engines. Experian Hitwise Search Intelligenceâ&#x201E;˘ for Hong Kong is also the first Hitwise product that recognizes Traditional Chinese characters. This means marketers will be able to search Traditional Chinese characters and they will also appear in any reports generated.

"We are delighted to expand our Experian Hitwise service in Hong Kong by including search capabilities in both English and Traditional Chinese," said Graeme Beardsell, Managing Director of South Asia at Experian. "In order to grow and protect market share, businesses must have sound data to base decisions on. Search Intelligence provides the most timely and comprehensive information about Internet usage and will help marketers better understand the specifics of consumer behavior and competitors' marketing activities in the Hong Kong market. This is a crucial tool for marketers to improve and measure the effectiveness of their online marketing campaigns."

TECHNOLOGIES & PRODUCTS

The Hong Kong Search Intelligence service will provide clients with data on website industry and category rankings, Clickstream traffic activity, search behavior and keyword research. Hitwise clients will also have access to additional tools to create custom categories, search term portfolios and customized dashboards. These search functions will enable companies to drive better and more qualified traffic to their websites, protect their base, brand and market share by acting on the terms that are driving traffic to competitors and make timely decisions based on what products and services people are searching for during that period of time. "Companies based in Hong Kong can expect to see powerful outcomes in a short time frame by using a service like this. We already have a proven track record in achieving results for our Hitwise clients. For example, an Australian car rental company was able to increase its web traffic by over 40

percent within one month of subscribing to Search Intelligence, by identifying major keyword traffic drivers they were not using in their adwords campaigns," added Beardsell. In addition, Experian Hitwise clients will also receive consulting services to drive strategy and generate immediate returns. The Search Intelligence service also complements the Experian CheetahMail e-mail marketing service available in Hong Kong, to provide a comprehensive digital marketing portfolio.

paigns, and analyse websites that receive the most traffic from individual keywords.

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Compare search terms: Chart search terms over time, to determine a term's demand and popularity.

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Gap analysis: Compare two sets of search term data and find the 'gaps' that are missing from your search campaigns.

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Advanced portfolio features: Create search term lists and store them within Hitwise accounts. Use tools to manage, chart and trend keyword portfolios over time including paid and organic rate across a group of terms, keyword breakdown, search engine share and searches vs. clicks.

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Advanced filtering: Filter by engine to include and exclude terms in results (e.g. branded terms).♦

Search Intelligence key features include:

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Search terms to a website or industry: Analyse all keywords and search terms that successfully drive traffic to a specific website, industry or custom category.

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Search term variations and analysis: Determine variations and performance of a specific term to include in search cam-

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Compared to other forms of advertising, the return on investment is really high, the whole business model is very economical, and the marketing cycle is very efficient for advertisers, as they pay for performance only. We feel that if you operate this marketing tool properly itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more of a sales force to advertisers rather than a marketing tool, because in the end the traffic will turn into closed deals on your web site.â&#x20AC;? Margaret Chang, General Manager, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Southeast Asia

COMPANIES & CAMPAIGNS

e-Dialog: Data Needs to Be in Every Marketerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s DNA

Asian e-Marketing recently had the opportunity to interview Ms. Simone Barratt, e-Dialogâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Managing Director International, during her visit to Singapore as well as meeting-up with her colleague Mr. Darren Fifield, Managing Director of e-Dialog Asia-Pacific, who is based here. Consistently recognized by top analyst firms for both outstanding service and first-class technology, e-Dialog is a global provider to some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most recognized brands, with offices in Boston, London, New York, Seattle, and since June in Singapore, too. The company is convinced that e-mail is a key component of the total marketing mix and provides its clients with a complete and flexible e-mail marketing solution, helping them to deploy e-mail as a means to maximize the potential of e-commerce, social media, mobile media, and even traditional marketing channels. So let me give you some insights into our extensive conversation to get an idea about the enthusiastic experts behind the brand. Q: Can you provide me with a brief background of your company and yourself and what motivated eDialog to open an office in Singapore this past June?

Simone Barratt: e-Dialog was originally set up way back in 1996 in the States and then came to Europe in early 2000 and I think historically we have always been known as an e-mail service provider. However, in the last 18 months or so we have pretty much shifted our positioning from a purely e-mail service provider to marketing/technology serSimone Barratt vices. So we have technology as a heritage but we are that hybrid combination of being marketers and technologists at the same time. We try to bridge the gap between marketing and IT, so the skill -sets that we employ internally are a mix of the two. We have our own core technologies, sending probably over 100 billion e-mails a year, and then on top of that we recently acquired a mobile company so that our clients are able to track conversations wherever they start - be it on a website, a banner ad, or through the mobile or email channel. Use that data, learn from that data and then be able to deploy on-going communications back out through whichever channel the consumer actually wants to receive it, whether it be through the mobile, through the PDA or through the e-mail or back on the website. That is our big vision picture.

COMPANIES & CAMPAIGNS

We were acquired two years ago by GSI Commerce, listed on NASDAQ, and after Amazon and eBay, GSI probably generates more on-line revenues than anyone else in the world but nobody has ever heard of them. They are like a white label Amazon, which means that they go to a retailer, like Ralph Lauren or Toys R Us, and say rather than having a contract with multiple vendors to build a website, to host a website, to design it, to take photographs to go on a website, manage all the on-line transactions and credit controls, have a call centre to support it, have a warehouse for distribution, GSI will give you everything, an end to end e-commerce solution. Their proposition is that they don’t want to charge clients for all that, but rather want a commission on every product that is sold; thus, of course it is (building) long-term relationships. So if you think about it, what drives more sales on-line – it’s good digital marketing. So it was a very smart, strategic, synergistic acquisition to acquire our company, eDialogue.

Philips is another global client as well as British Airways globally and then certainly in Europe we have a lot of Pan European companies. We are used to multi-lingual, multicountry, multi-cultural programs, so I think that’s why Asia Pacific actually reports in under Europe within e-Dialog rather than into America. Of course, we recognised that we must have somebody who understands the local market as well and are glad that we found Darren who has worked in the marcomms sector for years and knows the vagaries and opportunities of the regional market. Being based in Singapore was a decision that we made as well to resource multiple languages out of the team, which is currently providing 12 languages. Whatever skill sets, be it marketing or technology, the core thing we are looking for in people working for us is passion. So that’s really kind of a potted history of who we are and how we got to Singapore.

We brought a lot of their existing retail clients to our platform, started doing smarter work for them, sold more of their products on-line, and GSI always gets consequently more revenue from the commission of those product sales, that encourages them to build up even more different marketing services/ agencies to support these retail clients they have all over the world. GSI is also planning to come to Asia Pacific soon with an office in Japan to support their clients there. e-Dialog, however, has its own client base and we chose Singapore for slightly different reasons. We do, for example, all the e-mail marketing for Dell Consumer around the world and it was Dell who actually very much pushed us into this region and we are delighted to have done that. We also support Skype, that has one of the largest e -mail databases in the world, and we support them globally.

Darren Fifield: We bring to the Asia Pacific region our experience, as Simone said, which is outstanding. We have very stringent data policies that we are bringing across the marketplace within the Asia Pacific region, guaranteeing that our clients’ data is safe with us, that we handle their mailings, deal with their un-subscribers and the tracking of that. We have a depth of expertise and best practice in the European and American markets and can help to build our clients’ database here in the region and support them in addressing the needs of their consumers better or to have that relevance of messaging. We still have a lot of customers in Asia at the moment that “batch and blast”, often not even personalizing their e-mailing. We have systems that are capable of doing that and so much more when it comes to relevant messaging or a touch base to their consumer.

Q: How would you characterize the unique value propositions of e-Dialog?

Simone Barratt: In fact it is always about combining the expertise of people with technology and if you can put the two together, rather than having them separate, you can use your tools to much better effect. We are extremely focused on providing a good quality service to our clients and that comes through smart people. When I set up the London office in late 2000, I just wanted to do the best work for the best clients and I needed the best people to do that. Coming here is going to be interesting. As I mentioned earlier, we work very closely with Dell, and we now need to work out if that same model is going to be appropriate here in Asia Pacific or do we need to be flexible about it? We have always said that we act as an extension to our clients’ marketing department and so it has really resonated and made us think a little bit differently about how quickly we will round up staff here. Currently we have a staff load of eight people, but we are moving already to a larger office space which can accommodate 32 people. Companies are looking for assistance to do a better job and we help them. Q: What are the big opportunities and challenges you expect for your business venture here in the region? Darren Fifield: I think the opportunity, first of all, is to maximize the existing client base we have got. We are very fortunate and very privileged to have such top label clients we can reach out to locally. We get different patterns, as some organizations operate under a very centralized control of marketing, some like to have them localized which can actually change every two years as there is no silver bullet best solution. So priority number one for us is to reach down to our existing global clients who are operating in this region to service them locally, which is already keeping us quite busy.

COMPANIES & CAMPAIGNS

Darren Fifield

The office was created with the objective of serving one client, namely Dell, to ensure a good transition to e-Dialog and hit the road running.

We commenced mailing with them on 1 August and we have not missed a beat since then. Things have gone very smoothly and the client is very happy and that was the first objective. At the same time, as Simone said, we have existing global clients who have said “Hey, hang on, you guys are now in the Asia Pacific region, we want to work with you, because we have databases that are potentially underutilized, let’s go!” So we are talking to some fairly significant groups where we will see a significant increase in those numbers absolutely. • Opportunity #1: Take the existing global clients and support them locally. • Opportunity #2: Take all our other clients, who we don’t have a global relationship with yet, and tell them we are now here. • Opportunity #3: Because we have such big high profile brand names, I think it is not going to be too difficult to be able to knock on a few doors and just say “would you like to have a conversation with us?” So we are certainly going to leverage the reputation, having been in the top right hand of Forrester’s quadrant for the past four years. • Opportunity #4: Mobile will be another opportunity, especially in Asia. However, the complexity of the market, the way it differs over a one hour flight, is challenging, but that’s the fun part when consulting our clients.

Q: On-the-go e-mail access will definitely grow with the increasing Smartphone market. What does that mean for e-Dialog?

I don’t know what the next phase will be. We won’t be at the bleeding edge, but we will be smart, we’ll watch.

Simone Barratt: We did a survey in 13 countries around the world US, Europe and Asia Pacific – where we asked people’s attitudes towards mobile, social and e-mail and how they use it. And you just get wonderful variances in adoption and willingness to share data and what they use it for and for conversion to purchase and great stats. We had Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore and Australia and then of course Europe, but have left out India. It’s nice to see the different regions around the world in comparison. Business is exponentially harder in a multi-country market, like Europe, but here it is even harder still, compared to US. You have to deal with so many different languages, so many different messages and people who have databases that are well in advance of what of North America has in terms of size. If you accumulate Europe and Asia together, you potentially have databases that are three to four times the size of North America and a lot of them probably still untapped. So we are talking about huge opportunities. Whenever I am in the US, I just blow people away with the numbers in Asia, as to where the regions are and how many users there are. The fact that there are some 850 million Internet users in Asia today is impressive. (With over 2 billion mobile subscribers in Asia Pacific, and the expectation that this will grow to over 2.5 billion by 2013 is even better. And knowing that around 30% of the global market for Smartphones is in Asia Pacific which is expected to number some 347 million by 2015 is exciting.) As a company, we are still very entrepreneurial in our outlook. We still have to be flexible and of the right mind set. So, we recognized quite quickly that we needed to buy a mobile company.

Q: Targeted messaging and maximization of databases is always a hot topic and e-Dialog is an expert. What would be your advice to a client who intends to optimize his e-mail marketing campaigns for better results? How can he measure his return on investment and track his campaign in general? Simone Barratt: Let me start with the first bit that is about targeting. Databases vary hugely in their sophistication even if sometimes you just have an e-mail address. On the whole, I think many companies do a pretty lousy job and to be honest what they do is sort of a cop-out. You must have e-mail capture, optin, Facebook ability on every page of your website and you should target yourself, as a benchmark, to capture a minimum of 5% of every unique visitor that comes to your website. Just capture their e-mail address, get that information and then you can start to ask questions. Travel companies, for instance, are very good at doing this. They want to know what type of holidays you like, what sports you do, where do you like to go, skiing or scuba diving, what’s your local airport and departure, how often do you go on holiday, have you got children, all that kind of information. But there is a skill in asking these questions as well, like not to ask too many because that is a barrier to giving information in the first place. So there is normally a high level process of getting the e-mail address first, then establishing a bit of trust and then starting to ask questions. In any case make sure to deliver some value associated with the information that you are sharing, so again the content of your e-mails can be driven by the information you have gathered with the explicit data that you have shared.

COMPANIES & CAMPAIGNS

And as Darren was saying earlier, at e-Dialog we are just very smart users of data, it’s our job to squeeze every drop of value out of the data we have for our clients and then use it to differentiate their email from those of others.

Even if you have no other information than an e-mail address, you still have the ability to start to understand the consumer. In e-mail you track when it opens but you also track every single click, so if a person keeps clicking on Paris you could send perhaps more about Paris hotels, more about short breaks this year. With no information shared, it is still possible to infer from click behavior what a person might be interested in, which can then be used for segmentation, same as with click behavior on Websites. The most powerful targeting message or data is, of course, what you bought, because that is real. For instance, a Ferrari is definitely every man’s dream, but he knows his wife will make him buy a proper car, so it is the purchase that is the real behavior. Retailers are good at this. If you bought a particular brand or product, e.g. a certain printer, they know what cartridges you are going to need in 12 months time. Just watching reveals the behavior. As you realize there is a whole hierarchy of how to get information – no data, user behavior, data you told me/rates, data about what you actually purchased are the best.

That is where the technology comes into action, because you can’t possibly produce 40,000 permutations of an e-mail. You have to use technology, what I call production strategy, although it sounds so dull and boring. Everyone wants the big marketing idea that wins awards, but production optimization is a critical part of what we have to do. We have to think of very clever ways of automating and marrying content modules to preference information and purchase information so that the technology can automatically match them and then spit it out. People expect real time messaging and you can’t do that by hand. We have the capability in place, but have to deal with the fact that every client relationship is different: so for British Airways we VPN’d straight into their Teradata system, for Philips we are the database of record, for Dell we work with their data provider and we have daily synchronizations. Even if our clients are in the same sector, like Virgin Holidays or Thomas Cook, their internal configuration, internal data systems, internal content systems, are usually all very different. So we have to be in the middle like a consolidator, which is the reason why we have more technology people on our staff rather than marketers because these database programmers or business systems analysts are the ones who have to be smart enough to look for the right piece of data or content.

A strategy is only as effective as the people who implement it, which is why e-Dialog employs only the best and brightest the industry has to offer. Our professional services team is able to apply e-Dialog’s unmatched expertise in e-mail and database marketing and call upon our field of experts in creative, application development, deliverability, data management, analytics, and more – all in an effort to ensure that our clients’ campaigns are secure, compliant, engaging, and profitable. Not to mention that we are uniquely positioned to support global marketing needs, with services available in multiple time zones and the ability to speak more than 25 languages. We have only recently changed our website slogan to “Conversations to Conversions”, it used to be “E-mail marketing precisely” as we make data “actionable”, as we call it. We are experts in capturing data and use it to create a very specific, personalized, targeted relevant message that will drive the conversation and will more likely result in that conversion which ultimately is what marketing is all about. To conclude this informative and revealing interview a quote from Simone that succinctly summarizes our whole conversation: “Data needs to be in every marketer’s DNA. It’s the glue between customers and retailers; the bridge between offline and online; the connector between multi-source and multichannel, the enabler that can turn conversation into conversion”. By Daniela La Marca

COMPANIES & CAMPAIGNS

Microsoft Truly Accelerates the “Beauty of the Web” Just two months ago Microsoft Corp. announced the worldwide beta availability of Internet Explorer 9 - its new web browser that takes full advantage of Windows 7. Around the same time I had the chance to meet Mr. Richard Dunmall, Vice President, Microsoft Advertising Greater Asia Pacific and Americas, during Spikes Asia in Singapore, who was indeed an interesting and knowledgeable interviewee. Richard’s role is to work with advertisers and publishers to build stronger consumer engagement in the digital space across the region in Asia Pacific, Canada and Latin America. Before moving to Asia in October 2008, Richard was the Senior Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA for Microsoft Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group, incorporating Atlas, DRIVEpm, Massive and ScreenTonic.

Prior to its acquisition by Microsoft, he had joined the then aQuantive owned technology and media network business in April 2006 and was responsible for expanding operations across Europe, Middle East and Africa, as well as continuing to grow its already present businesses in the UK. He has also worked on the agency side, as CEO for MindShare Interaction UK, for WPP’s Global Digital Media Investment Management Leadership team, and as CEO of mOne UK, a digital and direct marketing offering set up by MindShare and Ogilvy. Richard started his career in traditional publishing, predominately at VNU Business Publications, and learned his job on the go and has brought this rich experience to the digital industry. Rather than focusing on the then hot topic of IE9, I tried to glean some insights into Microsoft’s plans and activities in Asia Pacific. So read on to find out what Richard had to say.

COMPANIES & CAMPAIGNS

What are Microsoft Advertisingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s big business opportunities and challenges in Asia Pacific? Starting with the opportunities here in Asia, first of all there are a number of mobile first markets that can lead the way on the monetization of the mobile device. Mobile has been the new thing for years but it has not yet reached the tipping point to seize the opportunity to create an accessible market to lead the way. There are many markets in the region which are mobile first markets where a whole generation of consumers has no other internet experience except through mobile devices, for which this level of technology has only been around the past two to three years. Our strategy is to penetrate the market space with the Windows 7 Phone, as we feel that we are back on track as far as the mobile space is concerned, both from a consumer product perspective, as well as the advertising perspective. Through our broad range of contacts in all areas of the business we are able to connect technology and media. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s crucial, as the office of the CMO is increasingly at the crossroads between traditional and digital marketing, struggling to interconnect with the CFO, the CEO and the CIO. Thus, we are looking for platforms and tools we can build, that help create CMO dashboards or analytics that expose data which allow the making of better decisions in real time. Our clients increasingly ask us to provide the context to what is learnt about social, about search, about content, and about product development. Lastly, on the opportunity side, we see a shift in the way that media is procured. A Website used to be bought the same way you buy a magazine. However, you can see now increasingly, that monetization has to be made by more personalized content, which is especially exciting as it is still all fairly new in Asia.

The flip side, going into the challenges, we face is finding talent and uplifting our sales teams that understand and have the ability to convey whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needed and know how to do it. Next is the agency community and overcoming the obstacle of how to shift their perception to go from traditional, which has worked well for many years, to digital whose success is not yet proven. Lastly we have to simplify how we as a company talk about ourselves. Our structures and areas of operation are so complex, that it is sometimes overwhelming to our customers when we try to convey it. What kind of digital advertising offers can clients expect from you? Most clients still think about us as MSN, which is fine. Our ad business has been built around MSN for the past 10-12 years. But in the meantime, through launches and acquisitions, our media portfolio expanded. Just think about X-Box, mobile, Windows Live, search, or addressable TV. Three things have been getting consumers and advertisers alike excited recently: 1. Bing, which by now, we believe, offers better functionality than our phenomenal search competitor; 2. Windows 7 Phone, which comes with a Bing button, can play XBox games, can link with all MS Office products, which no other mobile can; and 3. The X-Box Connect, which now has a natural user interface, by moving without touching, as well as voice recognition. This takes it from a young male customer base to the whole age range and can also be used for advertizing. You can watch your movies with the X-Box, without a remote, just by your voice.

Richard Dunmall

Do you think mobile is the way to go, the small screen will replace the big one, or will the PC survive? I think that mobile interaction is the most exciting, but we have to think about it agnostically: What do you do when you are on the phone, what do you use the mobile PC or even gaming consoles and TVs for? Marketers now have to span their advertizing stories across all these devices to be most effective, and not just say, this is a mobile campaign, this is an online campaign. Mobile devices have had a tough time, as expectations were high. Smart phone technologies have now advanced enough to make the experience a more holistic one - size of the screen, the ability to touch - that you will really see this explode to a new level. What kind of trends do you see in the online advertising arena here in Asia? At a high level we would see less advertising and more experiences. Next comes multi-screen, where all different media work together, TV, online, mobile, gaming console, etc. A lot of digital advertizing in APAC has been quite simplistic in the way that it is performance-based, which actually applies globally. But the question is how to get the brands interested in understanding what the Internet can do?

COMPANIES & CAMPAIGNS

Microsoft is the largest player in this arena, also in APAC, and is able to cover all these different technologies. That is the success factor, as clients and agencies nowadays want to do more partnerships with less people, consolidating their activities with one player and then going deeper. What do you personally think of social media as a marketing platform? What’s the real value of user generated content? Please share your perspectives on this. For me, social media is less of a destination, but more of a connection between different media. We have been in this arena for quite some time - Instant Messenger, Hotmail are all in the social space. Right now, Facebook is leading in this field, but it could look different in five years time. We feel like we are in this space and part of it. If you look at the Windows 7 Phone, it has all the Facebook feeds on the home page and likewise in Windows Live assets you can pull your photos, blogs, and instant messaging conversations all into one space.

What we are being asked to look at is to think more and more about paid media, owned media, and earned media. In that space social media still has to develop a lot, so it’s still pretty early days. Measuring the effectiveness of social media is a hot topic, where influence and engagement are seen in general as the core metrics. How does Microsoft advertising evaluate social media? I think performance measurement is a much bigger industry issue than just social. I think we are one of many big players trying to figure out how we make it more accessible, how we judge success, and not just across social, but across mobile, across display, across search, across TV. Frankly, if you think about traditional media, the conventional measurement is to use 1,000 people panels. It is not that it is in doubt, as it has been accepted over 50 years and many companies make huge advertizing decisions based on this. However, that doesn’t mean they are right! So how can we learn from that?

How can we translate that into the digital media? How can we get to a point that we can really articulate how we can interact with our audience in a way that is familiar for people who have been working in the industry for a long time? We do all sorts for branding studies with partners like Comscore and Nielsen, but it is actually a bigger challenge than just Microsoft. It is an agency challenge, a media owner challenge, it is a client challenge to have a unified view on the subject. I think that Richard is spot on; he has truly hit the bull’s-eye. Marketers still seem to feel uncomfortable with digital media and still need to be convinced of the enormous benefits, advantages and enhanced ROI it can deliver, which is, I guess, in the interest of all of us. So let’s consistently point out to them that it is important to embrace the openness and transparency of the Internet, which is not only the future of advertising and marketing but also the most cost effective use of advertising and marketing spend – simply the way to do business in the future.♦ By Daniela La Marca

â&#x20AC;&#x153;For me, social media is less of a destination, but more of a connection between different media.â&#x20AC;? Richard Dunmall, Vice President, Microsoft Advertising Greater Asia Pacific and Americas

LEGISLATION

Google’s Privacy Lapses Jeopardizes its Squeaky-clean Image It is a common assumption by Internet users that their online activities are private and, to an extent, anonymous. This is definitely not the case. A user's Internet Service Provider (ISP) has the power to monitor and log all traffic - including the websites that they access, the emails that they send, the newsgroups that they read, and even the search terms that they type into Google, Yahoo! & Co. There have been numerous examples of search engines disclosing records of users' searches. Google, by far the most popular search engine today, maintains both records of IP addresses and a long-term "cookie" that records an individual's searches for up to several years. Although this data is not immediately associated with a user's name, the information stored by ISPs and websites allows for easy linking of an individual to their stored search records, with potentially serious consequences.

Google recently barely avoided getting fined in the UK for collecting personal data, including email addresses and passwords being used in public Wi-Fi spots. Despite labeling this as a "significant breach" of the Data Protection Act that was "not fair or lawful," the UK’s Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), has simply requested that Google delete the offending data and given the search giant nine months to review its privacy practices. In direct monetary terms it seems as if Google has got off lightly, at least in the UK, but investigations in other nations are ongoing. There cannot, however, be any denying that to some extent users’ confidence has been damaged in the brand and its squeaky-clean image, built around the company’s informal “don’t be evil” motto. According to Jack Adams, search engine optimization (SEO) consultant at leading search specialist marketing and technology firm Greenlight, the damage to Google’s brand perception is substantial and perhaps a time for Bing to make a focused marketing push.

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Indeed, as much has been admitted by Alma Whitten, Google’s new Director of Privacy for the Engineering and Product divisions. "We're very aware that our business is based on the trust of users and if damaged [then] that's the worst thing we could do." This damage has been compounded by the widespread national news coverage of the privacy breaches, especially with the matter being discussed in the UK Parliament. Even in general conversations, one slightly less-than-techsavvy individual expressed reservations over Google, asking whether this breach means they should discontinue Internet banking in fear of online fraud, demonstrating just how this news has pervaded the general public. The question though is whether this has put that respective individual off searching with Google? Will they switch to a competitor? The damage to Google’s brand perception is considerable, but the impact on search engine marketing is likely very little.

With Google near to monopolizing UK search, having 93% market share at present according to StatCounter, and “to google” being a verb officially listed in the Oxford English Dictionary since 2006, the awareness of competitors seems too low for many of Google’s users to really take action against the search giant.

means every engineering project leader will be required to maintain a privacy design document for each initiative they are working on.

Given this, the UK’s traditional focus on Google for search engine marketing looks set to continue for the meantime, and Google seems, at least, to have learned a lesson on privacy.

Action is definitely needed, considering that in May 2010 Google announced that it had mistakenly collected unencrypted Wi-Fi payload data, including information sent over networks, when using its Street View cars. The company has now admitted that entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords, and has apologized again for failing so badly in regard to privacy and announced that the data is now being deleted from its files.

With the appointment of Alma Whitten as Director of Privacy across both engineering and product management, Google will continue to build and enhance effective privacy controls into its products and internal practices. In addition, Google employees are receiving orientation training on Google’s privacy principles and are required to sign Google’s Code of Conduct, which includes sections on privacy and the protection of user data. The company is also beefing up its compliance mechanisms, which

This document will record how user data is handled and will be reviewed regularly by managers, as well as by an independent internal audit team.

It is simply beyond belief that a leading technology company, that handles such a huge amount of sensitive data, is somehow lacking significant preventative legal measures and procedures on privacy. Let’s hope that this doesn’t continue to get out of hand. By Daniela La Marca

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"We're very aware that our business is based on the trust of users and if damaged [then] that's the worst thing we could do." Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy for the Engineering and Product divisions, Google, Inc

BUZZWORD

Net Neutrality At its simplest, net neutrality, also called network or Internet neutrality, is the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally; more specifically that governments and Internet service providers (ISPs) should not place any restrictions on the Internet’s content or means of accessing that content. The proponents of net neutrality include consumer advocates, online companies and some of the biggest technology companies such as Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, Microsoft, along with many other companies and of course Google. According to Google, “network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet. The Internet has operated according to this neutrality principle since its earliest days... Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. The broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online.”(Guide to Net Neutrality for Google Users). Google and Verizon, however, have put forward a proposal to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to essentially keep this net neutrality on the public Internet but to allow broadband operators and network operators to offer new services that could be seen as a kind of discriminatory project, having health care monitoring, advanced educational services, or new entertainment and gaming options in mind. Essentially, they are proposing they be permitted to create a two-tier system whereby network capacity could be sold to companies willing to pay for that service to in turn provide a higher quality service to their opt-in users. Protests followed from organizations like SavetheInternet.com that described it this way: “Google previously had been a champion of policies such as Net Neutrality - the fundamental principle that keeps the Internet open and free from discrimination. Its decision to team up with Verizon has drawn the ire of public interest advocates.” Creating a two-tier system means legislating neutrality in one of the tiers but it still discriminates, in their eyes, as it is just fragmentation.

Bear in mind the goal of the founder of the Internet, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, whose intention was to give everybody access to information. That is and remains the basis of the Internet, thus concerns regarding ISPs that don’t operate neutral networks are justified. Just think about the Chinese Government that has famously applied a firewall to the entire country’s Internet access, filtering out sites that they believe to be inappropriate for their citizens. We all know that this is an extreme case, but one that gets emphasized when discussions of internet censorship come up. In 2005, the FCC issued its Broadband Policy Statement (also known as the Internet Policy Statement), which lists four principles of an open Internet, namely "to encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to": 1. 2. 3. 4.

access the lawful internet content of their choice. run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement. connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network. competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

These points are often summarized as "any lawful content, any lawful application, any lawful device, and any provider".

Buzzword

It advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and the modes of communication allowed.

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Net neutrality advocates, however, have established different definitions of network neutrality:

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Absolute non-discrimination: Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu: "Network neutrality is best defined as a network design principle. The idea is that a maximally useful public information network aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally." Limited discrimination without QoS tiering: United States lawmakers have introduced bills that would allow quality of service discrimination as long as no special fee is charged for higher-quality service.

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Limited discrimination and tiering: This approach allows higher fees for QoS as long as there is no exclusivity in service contracts. According to Sir Tim Berners-Lee: "If I pay to connect to the net with a given quality of service, and you pay to connect to the net with the same or higher quality of service, then you and I can communicate across the net, with that quality of service." "[We] each pay to connect to the net, but no one can pay for exclusive access to me." First come first served: According to Imprint Magazine, University of Michigan Law School Professor Susan P. Crawford "believes that a neutral Internet must forward packets on a first-come, first served basis, without regard for quality -of-service considerations."

A net neutral broadband connection will neither face any limitations nor restrictions related to the communications that can take place over the networks. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for example, has released a tool that they have named “Switzerland”, offering users the ability to discover whether their network is neutral or not.♦

APPOINTMENTS

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) announced a series of agreements with four other leading marketing organisations for future collaboration: the CMO Council, International Advertising Association (IAA) UK Chapter, The Marketing Society and The Marketing Academy. Spanning a number of new initiatives, the partnerships all form part of MMA’s aims to promote and educate, which form two of the five elements of the Association’s core building blocks to promote, educate, measure, guide and protect.

Emmanuel Allix

Emmanuel Allix, Vice-president and Managing Director, Asia Pacific at InMobi has been elected to the Mobile Marketing Association’s Asia Pacific Board of Directors for 2011. The key focus areas for the new MMA APAC Board will be: to promote the mobile channel to increase mobile marketing spend in the region; educate brands, agencies and consumers about the full scale and scope of the mobile marketing channel; create and develop authoritative measurement, metrics and insight into the size, growth, trends and effectiveness of mobile marketing; roll out the next set of guidelines, best practices and standards for the industry; and protect opportunities by managing industry self-regulatory programs.

Mediabrands announced the appointment of Dene Schonknecht as Chief Information Officer, Asia Pacific. Based in Singapore, Dene’s primary responsibility will be to establish and maintain synergies between Mediabrands’ technology and business organizations, ensuring consistency with the group’s regional and global business strategy. Dene brings a wealth of technology and communications expertise to the Mediabrands network. Previously Dene was Global Industry Manager at Microsoft, where he specialized in the Communications sector for a decade. During his 15 years in the technology industry, Dene has maintained a strong business development focus, and in the past five years he has gained a deep familiarity with the global Media & Entertainment industry. With approximately 1,000 media and marketing experts across the region, Asia Pacific remains a top priority for Mediabrands. The region is a key component of the firm’s strategy to accelerate market share for its clients around the world.

Dene Schonknecht

Ruckus Wireless™, the Smart Mobile internetworking company, announced the appointment of long-time HP Veteran, Louis Au Kwok-Leung, as its Vice President for Asia Pacific. Au will be responsible for expanding the Ruckus business within this rapidly growing region and increasing its capacity to respond more effectively and rapidly to the tremendous growth opportunities in Asia Pacific, the fastest growing market for the company.

Louis Au Kwok-Leung

The appointment of Au follows the recent announcements of key managers in Southeast Asia, India and Australia/New Zealand. The expansion of the Ruckus management team reflects the dramatic growth of Wi-Fi within the APAC market driven by the migration to higher speed 802.11n technology and the upsurge in demand for smarter Wi-Fi to meet new enterprise and carrier demands for highly reliable and multimedia-ready wireless solutions.

Au has over 20 years of professional experience in the networking and telecommunications industry. Prior to joining Ruckus, he was vice president and general manager for HP’s ProCurve networking in Asia Pacific and Japan. Before that, he spent over 16 years at Nortel Networks, where he held a number of executive and senior management positions in the areas of enterprise voice and data, e-business and operations. He has worked with leading operators and enterprises to establish their wireless infrastructure in the region. Au graduated from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Surrey. He is fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese, and is based in Singapore.

APPOINTMENTS

Frederic Giron

Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry, announced Frederic Giron to be the new face heading the IT Services team. As Vice President, IT Services, Frederic Giron is in charge of the Services Research Practice for Springboard Research. Mr. Giron is responsible for the strategic direction and growth of the company’s IT Services practice, with an aim to provide better market insights to Springboard Research clients. He is primarily involved in expanding and developing the research coverage of the Asia Pacific IT Services market and development of Asia Pacific and Middle East/ Africa based research and consulting accounts. Prior to joining Springboard Research, Frederic’s role as a Research Director at Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) included development and maintenance of market models and forecasting methodologies on Software and IT Services markets, including the management of research activities for Southern Europe. Before PAC, he has worked as a SAP consultant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Seepij Gupta, has been appointed as an Associate Research Manager with the Springboard Research IT Services team. We will undertakes research activities in tracking the IT Services market across the Asia Pacific region. Seepij’s role includes closely watching key market developments in the IT Services industry, analyzing channel dynamics impacting various industry verticals and business segments along with providing competitive analysis in the Asia Pacific region. His focus is on tracking the IT Services market and also emerging services markets like Remote Infrastructure Management, Datacenter services, Application Management and Cloud services. Seepij’s expertise also makes him a sought after speaker at industry conferences and events and his technology insights have been quoted by a number of international newspapers and trade publications. Prior to joining Springboard Research, Seepij served as a Senior Market Analyst with IDC’s Asia/Pacific Domain Research group covering Computing Systems and tracking datacenter and Cloud services and solutions. Before IDC Asia Pacific, Seepij was with IDC India, as a Manager for Consulting and Customized, Software and Services Research. During this time, he led the IT Services and consulting practice pioneering several research papers on Datacenter services, Unified communica-

Seepij Gupta

Microsoft Advertising has promoted Richard Dunmall, former Vice President for the Greater Asia Pacific and Americas region, to Vice President Global Agencies and Accounts, a position that will allow him to use to advantage his wealth of experience in Asia. Richard will re-locate from Hong Kong to New York to take charge of the newly combined Global Agencies and Global Accounts teams. Richard’s new role will see him take overall responsibility for driving revenue with the largest advertisers and key advertising agencies globally. He will report directly to Microsoft Advertising’s global corporate vice president, Carolyn Everson. Prior to his new global role, Richard was responsible for all advertising revenues generated across Microsoft Advertising’s entire portfolio of products and experiences across the Greater Asia Pacific region and the Americas. Richard Dunmall

APPOINTMENTS

Microsoft’s Consumer & Online (C&O) division has strengthened its regional marketing team in Asia Pacific (APAC) as part of the company’s focus to enrich the consumers’ experience across the multiple platforms - PC, TV, phone and internet. Led by Mark Britt, the division’s General Manager for APAC, and Haresh Khoobchandani, its Chief Marketing Officer, the new team will help to drive audience engagement for Microsoft’s consumer brands including Windows, Windows Live, MSN, Bing, Internet Explorer and Windows Phone. Mark Britt

Haresh Khoobchandani

Leveena Sadanandan joins C&O as the Consumer Marketing Communications Lead for Southeast Asia. In this role, Leveena will lead the region’s marketing communications efforts. An established marketing professional with regional experience, Leveena comes with strengths in integrated campaigns and consumer engagement and brings with her a passion and a strong understanding of the consumer audience. She began her career in the creative field before moving on to marketing in entertainment, retail and broadcasting industries. She was previously with Visa, where she spent the last six years planning and executing regional marketing programs. Leveena Sadanandan

Jonathan Wong joins C&O as the lead for Internet Explorer, responsible for developing and sustaining collaboration with partners in markets across the region. With over nine years of experience in the IT industry, Jonathon brings an in-depth understanding of the web to his new role. He was most recently the Web Platform Evangelist with Microsoft Singapore. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was with IBM.

Jonathan Wong

Priscilla del Castillo will join the C&O team as the Mobility Services Lead focusing on driving mobile partnerships for Windows Live. Priscilla will be relocating to Singapore from Seattle. She has been with Microsoft for five years and last assumed the role of a Digital Marketing Program Manager in Redmond.

Priscilla del Castillo

Mark Ma relocates to Singapore from Shanghai and will be leading the Windows Live + Online Audience Business Group in Asia Pacific. In this role, he is tasked with growing the company’s audience across its online properties. Mark brings with him valuable skill sets in Search, which will be critical in driving Microsoft’s integration with Yahoo and the growth of Bing in this region. Prior to taking up this position, Mark was C&O’s Regional Search Director driving the search and search monetization business in the Greater Asia Pacific region. He was also involved in Microsoft’s partnership initiatives in China, Japan, Australia and Korea. Mark comes with a deep online background in both audience and monetization. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was with Yahoo! Search.

APPOINTMENTS

Don Paterson relocates from the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s headquarters in Redmond to join the C&O team in Singapore, and will be leading the Consumer Windows business in Asia Pacific. With more than 11 years with Microsoft, Don brings a wealth of relevant experience and skills to his new role, along with a reputation for high standards of performance, results-oriented problem solving and strong cross-organizational leadership. He has worked in a variety of roles and was most recently with the Windows Consumer business group. His vast experience and deep understanding of the Windows business will bring a unique end -to-end view of the business across sales, marketing and the broader ecosys-

Keith Kok joins the C&O Marketing team as the Windows Live Product Manager for Southeast Asia. He will own the Windows Live go-to-market strategy and execution for Southeast Asia. Keith is transitioning from his previous role in the Singapore subsidiary where he led the digital marketing execution and has won a series of internal accolades for his digital work.

Global Human Resources (HR) software and services provider, NorthgateArinso has announced the appointment of Raj Sundarason, who will be based in Singapore, as its Regional Vice President of Sales & Marketing for the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa regions. This appointment came as NorthgateArinso opened their new APAC headquarters office in Singapore last month, following their acquisition of Convergys earlier this year. Sundarason previously managed client relationships and strategy with a global HRO provider specializing in multi-process, multi-country HR outsourcing for six years, where he successfully brought together customer needs and supplier capabilities to close complex HR outsourcing deals. In his new role with NorthgateArinso, he will have responsibility for developing and overseeing the regional sales function, as well as driving growth and key marketing strategies throughout each territory. Sundarason will be overseeing NorthgateArinsoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s global growth strategy in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa markets.

SinoMedia Holding Limited, a leading privately-owned media advertising operator in China providing nationwide TV advertising coverage for clients on China Central Television Station and other media advertising resources, appointed Mr. Tang Xiaoming as Chief Investment Officer. He will be responsible for managing and monitoring investment activities, maintaining relations with the investor community, as well as identifying and implementing short-term and long-term investment opportunities for the Group's sustainable growth. Prior to joining SinoMedia, Mr. Tang was the Senior Vice President of Redgate Media Group from 2005 to 2009, an integrated media and entertainment company in China. From 2000 to 2003, he was the Chief Financial Officer in Wanmo Performance Advertising, responsible for the financing and overall financial management. He also worked for Tyco International Ltd. from 1998 to 1999, responsible for mergers and acquisitions of projects and investments. Mr. Tang gained his MBA degree from the University of Chicago in 2005 and a BA degree in Economics from Renmin University, China in 1995.

The Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) elected two new Vice-Presidents. The President of KBSKorea, Kim In-Kyu, and the Director General of PBC-Pakistan, Murtaza Solangi, were elected unopposed to the ABU posts at the end of the 47th ABU General Assembly on 19-20 October, 2010 in Tokyo. They replace Manuel Goncalves of TDM-Macau and Hassan Khojasteh of IRIB-Iran. Both will join the President, Yoshinori Imai, and Vice-President Ibrahim Yahaya in the ABU leadership group. RTB-Brunei was elected to the ABU Administrative Council and BBS-Bhutan and KBS-Korea were re-elected.

APPOINTMENTS

C Y Foundation Group Limited has announced the appointment of Mr. Li Zhuo as Online Game Marketing Director. Mr. Li will be responsible for the marketing promotion of the Group's massively multiplayer online role-playing game 'Rohan' and lead the formulating of mid-term and long-tem marketing and product strategy. Mr. Li has 10 years experience in the online game industry and prior has been editor for mainstream gaming media and marketing director for many well known online game companies. Before joining C Y Foundation, Mr. Li was the marketing director of Beijing Guangyu Online Technology Co., a subsidiary of Hong Kong listed company Coslight Technology international Group, where he developed the business rapidly. Its 2009 turnover recorded RMB800 million and Guangyu Games was ranked as the 7th largest online game operators in China. The peak concurrent online players for a single online game exceeded one million users in 2009. On October 20, 2010 Experian® celebrated the launch of Experian Marketing Services in Cyberjaya. Officiated by Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) Chief Executive Officer, Datuk Badlisham Ghazali, the event served to officially introduce Marketing Services and recognize Experian’s impressive presence in Cyberjaya. With a staff of 185 and growing, the addition of Marketing Services in May 2010 demonstrates Experian Malaysia’s success in serving both local and global clients and seizing new opportunities for growth. Products offered include Hitwise, CheetahMail and QAS services, which help customers use data, connect with customers and make the internet work for them. With over 30 years of experience in markets across the globe, Experian has developed an unparalleled portfolio of services in addition to Marketing Services, including Decision Analytics, Credit Services and Interactive that span the entire spectrum of the customer life cycle.

Luxury Singapore-based hotel chain Meritus Hotels & Resorts assigned creative agency iris with creating a global campaign to re-launch the brand following a competitive pitch. The campaign will see iris create a refreshed identity for Meritus, with the aim of positioning the brand that offers travelers the best in traditional Asian hospitality combined with the best in modern luxury accommodation. This month, iris has also been tasked with handling all the advertising and communications for the launch of the new Audi A8 and has recently launched global brand campaigns for DKNY Jeans, Sony Ericsson and Johnnie Walker Black Label. iris’ award-winning Singapore operation, which was launched in 2006, serves as a strategic hub for Asia Pacific, and is now a 60-strong office, making it one of the fastest growing agency networks in the region.

IMPRINT

MediaBUZZ Pte Ltd, launched in early 2004, is an independent online publisher in the Asia Pacific region, focusing on the business of digital media and marketing. Asian e-Marketing is a true pioneer in Asia Pacificâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s digital marketing scene, empowering e-marketers in the vibrant and fast-paced electronic marketing environment. Key sections include e-marketing tips, best practices and trends/statistics, legislation affecting e-marketing, training the spotlight on companies and their e-marketing campaigns and e-marketing leadership profiles. Click here for the latest online edition Editor-in-Chief: Daniela La Marca

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Circulation & IT Manager: Mike Khoo Sales & Marketing: Carla Bertuzzi Articles contributed by: Rohit Dadwal Ralph Leonard John Merakovsky Jim Warren Published monthly by MediaBUZZ Pte Ltd 26 Saunders Road Emerald Hill Singapore 228268 Tel: +65 6836 1607 Tax: +65 6235 1706

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