Singapore Advertising Scene 2007 and beyond

Singapore Advertising Scene 2007 and beyond

Well, well, well it seemed that during the past 3 months, there had been lots of action in the area of internet.

For almost a few years since the crash of the dot.com no big boys in the traditional media were pumping in money to get hold of the market to excite it about the what the online market can do in the future for their business.

With the web2.0 and the long tail effect as coined by John Battelle (author of Google Search) and the broadband and 3G in places in Singapore, we can literally surf at over 300 hotspots. In addition, the convergence is happening with TV boys coming into the space of the classifieds, a rich picking indeed! So why the delay then and until now did we see a sleuth of launches. I believe it is these Companies’ boards of directors are now realizing that the business is NOT to be as Usual. Of course, when the giants move, they take time. I always remember this phrase, when the top turns by 1 degree, the little men below the organization chart feel the hurricane.

Meanwhile, the small boys in Singapore and not main streams operators are making waves as Choices galore fill the internet space out there. They are serving the niches and more.

Now I will move the scene to US as Singapore always follow the trends of what goes on in the US. Since the phenomenon of Google Search coming into play, their dominance is seen… they overhauled Yahoo! And Microsoft is still playing a catch up game. Even though they announced (BT 4th October 2007) that it will go BIG on advertising, they still have along way more to go. Microsoft will invest US$6billion into ad business in the long term and they believe that this sector will yield them 25% of their biz in few years.

Mr. Ballmer confidently declared, “Over time, all ad money will go through a digital ad platform,” In addition, “All media goes digital, all advertising goes digital.

They bought aQuantive which provides websites ads in front of Internet viewers based on specific conditions. Just a couple of days ago, they finally paid a record price for the popular social networking website, Facebook.

I quote from Business Week on 25th October, “After losing many battles to Web behemoth Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT) finally won one. On Oct. 24, the software giant prevailed in its bid for a stake in the social network Facebook. Microsoft agreed to buy a $240 million piece of the company in a transaction that values Facebook at $15 billion.” That will make many people millionaires and a few billionaires including its founder, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg. (Facebook is catching up on MySpace in terms of signed-up at the rate of 200,000 a day)

I believe there are about 20,000 sign-ups from Singapore including me. Actually, I have signed up to most of the social networking sites, Linkedin, MySpace, Multiply and many smaller ones.

Competition for the ad dollars on the internet is going to heat up. At the present moment, Google is dominating because of its Search and Adsense technology. That is the reason why its market price is over US$600 per share! During my talk in Ho Chi Minh City, I mentioned the following about Google which is:

What makes Google so hot? Shares hits US$615 on 10th Oct 2007!
l Google’s share of US Internet search market rose to 56.5%. Yahoo! Is 23.3% and Microsoft is 11.3%
l The US Web advertising market will climb 29% to US$21.7 billion and will double in 2011 (source: eMarketer)
l Google will show on YouTube videos on thousands of websites with ads attached to clips
l Google plans to buy ad distributor DoubleClick amongst others

Well, what leaves the Singapore Media? Well, the prominent traditional players are: the SPH Group which produces the English papers, Straits Times, Business Times and an afternoon tabloid, the New Paper and a host of other magazines and outdoor media.

The other group is Media Corp which controls all the airwaves; TV and Radio and recently made a successful foray into the printed media with a morning tabloid called “Today”. They have made gains in readership amongst the young while Straits Times suffered a dip. (Source: Today papers Oct 2007)

Recently, to most people, it’s an open secret that SPH Search and 701 Search Pte had a tie-up with Schibstedan to launch the Search engine which runs on Fast technology. Its local website was in the making for sometimes and supposedly to be unveiled in December.

Low and behold, in August, the Media Corp Group launched a classified website Mocca.com with an interesting and captivating TVC. It managed to capture the imagination of most Singaporeans including me! I instantly registered and use this free classified websites. Within 3 months, it became the top website in Singapore with 7 million visitors and only in October that SPH brought forth its website, 701 Search.

Well, the battle is now beginning. Who is going to take the classified pie which is huge, time will tell.

I think SPH has better edge to emerge winner as they have the right customer base. With the print media to back them up, there could be synergies between their print classified and the new ST701 website. Likewise, Mocca.com has that too but to a lesser extent. The only advantage that Mocca.com that ST701 did not is TVC and the Radio, which they gave up in 2003 due to amassing huge losses. (This is not their Core Competency)

Which is more popular at this juncture? Mocca.com ranks 10,000 whereas SPH ranks 26,000 worldwide (Alexa.com). ST701 should be catching up fast after the ramp up. Who knows, they may decide to work with M1 for which they also partially own.

In the SPH stable, there are many websites such as Asia1.com, omy.com.sg including the newspapers in electronic forms. Likewise, MediaCorp has more popular websites hosted by their array of TV, Radio personalities and of course, the TV stars.

Singapore consumers are like cats, no loyalty, whatever they can get free, they will go and enroll until they are full of it. That’s probably true of most consumers worldwide. I believe that most people have their own guiding principles of value. For certain thing, because of habit or natural formation, they attached a value to it.

Even the ugliest websites like craigslist will still have their own niche of users as long as it remains relevant to their lifestyle. The fans will swear and die by it. That’s the power of what’s good for you is not necessary good for me.

What about the other traditional media like…. Outdoor and Yellow Pages… watch out in the next issue