Posts Tagged ‘australia’

IAB Australia’s latest report on the country’s online advertising revenue shows classifieds spending increased by 9.4 per cent compared to the final quarter of 2010 and 16 per cent compared to the same time last year, giving the Australian classifieds industry its highest ever three-month figures.

The report, which IAB Australia puts out with the assistance of PriceWaterhouse Coopers, revealed total advertising expenditure for the March 2010 quarter increased by 17% year-on-year, coming it at A$512.5 million (US$ 463.5 million). Classifieds accounted for A$121 million, or 23.8 per cent, of that amount.

The leading category for classifieds advertising expenditure during the quarter was real estate, which in Australia is dominated by just two main players – Fairfax Media’s Domain and News Ltd-backed realestate.com.au. This was followed by recruitment and automotive listings.

Search and directories advertising continued to take the largest share of total online advertising expenditure, capturing 51.7 per cent of revenue. The report showed that within the search and directories market, search was growing at a faster pace.

The only lowlight was general display advertising, which plummeted 11 percent between December 2009 and March 2010 to A$126 million. However, that figure was still 15 per cent up on the same time last year.

Paul Fisher, CEO of IAB Australia, said the figures showed the continued strong growth of Australia’s online sector.

“Less than two years ago, many advertisers were asking ‘why should I advertise online?’. Today, the question we hear most is ‘how or where should I advertise online?’,” he said. “Driven by increasing consumer engagement with online content and advertising, this fundamental shift across the marketing and advertising industry underpins the continued double digit growth in online advertising expenditure.”

The latest data brings total advertising expenditure in Australian financial year 2010 (which ends June 30) to nearly A$1.5 billion. IAB says the industry is well placed to surpass A$2 billion by the end of June 2010 with all three industry sectors – search and directories, general display and classifieds – growing strongly year-on-year “as finance, automotive, real estate, and recruitment advertisers invested to reach, engage and influence consumers online.”

IAB also revealed that 75 per cent of display advertising revenue was spent through a “cost per thousand” pricing method, while direct response advertising accounted for just 25 per cent.

Australian information portal Yahoo7.com.au has teamed up with REA Group’s realestate.com.au to display property listings.

Yahoo7 is a joint venture between Yahoo! and Australia’s leading television network Channel 7. Before signing the REA Group deal it displayed listings through OnTheHouse.com.au, a site which Google AdPlanner says receives just 17,000 to 36,000 unique browsers a month.

By contrast, realestate.com.au, is Australia’s most visited property site receiving 4.6 million unique visitors a month by estimated cookies.

Yahoo7 already enjoys strategic partnerships with the country’s leading employment and auto listings sites, SEEK.com.au and carsales.com.au, and says that its REA deal “completes the trifecta”.

Meanwhile REA Group’s CEO told The Australian newspaper that this wasn’t simply a “traffic deal”.

“This is just the first step and there is more to come. It is not just a branding exercise,” he said.

Yahoo7′s main rival NineMSN (itself a joint venture between Microsoft and Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd, owners of the Nine Network) is partnered with realestate.com.au’s only serious competitor in the Australian market, Fairfax Media’s Domain.

News Ltd says its national daily, The Australian, has become the country’s first newspaper to sign advertising revenue for an iPad application.

While the iPad hasn’t yet launched Down Under (it will do so on May 10) News Ltd says it has already locked in around A$1million (US$920,000) of advertising revenue through the sale of four $250,000 digital advertising packages.

According to a report in The Australian, each package includes $200,000 of print and digital advertising, with the iPad component accounting for the remaining $50,000. Australia’s leading retail bank, The Commonwealth Bank, is believed to be one company which has already signed up.

“There’s a lot of interest based on the fact the technology’s hot,” News Limited national sales director Tony Kendall told The Australian.

“The big opportunity for newspapers is that packaged goods and traditional TV advertisers can now look at print and have the mass reach of the print product plus the high visual impact of the TV ad built into one,” Mr Kendall said. “The Coca-Colas of this world will now be on the hit-list of newspapers worldwide.”

The Australian’s report also said that its advertising packages were based on those already offered by  The Wall Street Journal, which had “reportedly sold six, four-month ad packages for $400,000 each to advertisers including Coca-Cola into its iPad app, and whose ads are able to play video”.

Meanwhile, News Ltd’s chief rival, Fairfax Media, will reportedly launch both free and paid iPad applications when the iPad enters the Australian market.

“There’ll be apps for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and there’ll be other products,” Fairfax Digital Director of News and Platforms, Darren Burdern, said. Although at this stage he said there were “no hints” about the exact nature of the apps that would be offered.

The latest Frost & Sullivan report shows that revenue from Australian online classifieds grew by 2.5% over 2009 with significant gains recorded in automotive and real estate listings. But it warns growth is likely to taper off by 2013, due to market maturity and social media alternatives.

The Australia Online Classifieds Market Report 2010 showed that growth over 2009 was hampered by the global financial crisis, which affected employment listings in particular. While revenue from auto listings and real estate went up by 22% and 24% respectively, revenue from online job listings plummeted by 21%.

The report said it was only natural that the employment sector was hardest hit by economic conditions as Australia’s job market dried up (the housing and second-hand car market remained surprisingly buoyant through the year). But it also said that the employment listings market had reached a state of maturity which was likely to impact on future earnings and that new media such as LinkedIn and twitter placed it under further pressure.

The employment market’s best chance of continued growth, the report concluded, was for additional migration from print for regional, suburban, educational and blue collar listings.

The report argued that the emergence of Google Maps was the major threat to the existing order in Australia’s real estate market. A lot would depend on how many agents dropped the big two (Domain.com.au and Realeaste.com.au) in favour of listing directly through Google or indirectly through free listings sites like HomeHound.com.au.

The report also predicted the increase of sale-by-owner sites may impact on revenue.

Frost & Sullivan submitted that the auto market had been propped up by an increased number of people searching for used cars rather than buying new. It also said the auto classifieds sector was likely to enjoy the highest growth over the next few years as it was the least mature classifieds market in the country,

Another key trend the report identified was the continued migration of revenue away from print, with online now accounting for 25% of all expenditure in the Australian market, up from 23% in 2008. But , it said, migration from print is unlikely to be the main driver of online revenue in the future.

“Over the past few years, the fundamental driver behind the growth of the online classifieds advertising market has been the migration of expenditure from print classifieds to online classifieds, as advertisers have gradually switched their expenditure to the online channel, or started using the online channel alongside the print channel,” Phil Harpur, ANZ Senior Research Manager, Frost & Sullivan said.

“However, as the Australian online classifieds market matures, it is, like the print classifieds market, becoming more closely correlated with economic conditions.

“As select sectors in the online classifieds market, such as the recruitment sector, have established themselves as more popular than print, both companies and consumers are questioning whether they also need to advertise on the print channel at all,” he concluded.

An Australian study has found that newspaper Web sites are not cannibalizing their print-based parents and that consumers see the two forms as complementary. 

The study, Newspapers Today Part 2: Print & Online, aimed to explore how consumers related to newspapers in their printed and online forms. It was carried out by Newspaper Works, an organization representing Australia’s major newspaper publishers. 

The study revealed that newspapers clearly led other forms of media on the measures of “dynamic, engaging and reputable” in the minds of consumers. It also found that news had its own currency, fuelling social, professional and personal conversation and debate.

The study also found that  consumers saw newspapers and their web sites as fulfilling different but complementary roles, with three-quarters of people who used both newspapers and websites saying that the print version gave a more relaxing reading experience. Meanwhile, 80 per cent of dual users found the Internet version gave a quick fix of news and information.

The study showed that it was the reason people wanted news which dictated whether they found the Internet or print version more useful. The print version was seen by consumers as better for topics which required an investment of time and money – such as real estate or in motoring – while the Internet met demand for regular, immediate updates in categories where currency of information was more important.

However, its most surprising finding was that Web sites were combining with print to give newspapers a much greater footprint, with the number of people using one or other format (or both) increasing. This led Newspaper Works to conclude that, contrary to popular views, newspaper Web sites weren’t cannabalizing print.

You can read the full results of Newspapers Today Part 2: Print & Online here.