Rules of online engagement

Speaking at the Online Publishers Association of South Africa seminar yesterday, Wednesday 26 September 2007, OPA chair and GM of the Mail & Guardian Online, Mathew Buckland, said with the future going digital, no brand could afford not to have an online advertising strategy.

While South African online publishers are still, frustratingly, having to educate clients and agencies alike about the power of the interactivity of online as a medium and battle for ad spend (currently only 1% locally of total ad spend versus international figures of 10 – 13% of total ad spend is online) they are, however, still implementing and investigating new technologies and applications to provide readers and advertisers with the best multi-medium and multi-platform options.

We can see the future as we're in the fortunate position of still being early adopters in our own country, as online publishers, and can learn from the experience of international media and brand case studies where broadband has been a reality for years. Convincing clients though to invest in online is still sometimes an uphill battle, despite the fact that there are 8.1 million users of South African websites measured by the OPA (4.1 million local users, rest from outside of South Africa). That 4.1 million is the size of a small country's population, so it's not insignificant.

Convergence

The fact remains, we operate in a global marketplace, with or without real broadband access and savvy brands are using the Internet to great success locally and abroad. Convergence is the keyword here.

Buckland highlighted future trends:

1. Multimedia ads: convergence of TV and online advertising.
   
2. Broadband: bigger ads, more creative rich media ads. Buckland doesn't believe the ad industry has been very creative online to date.
   
3. Profiling of users: behavioral targeted advertising.
   
4. More targeted advertising: less wastage, higher click through rates.
   
5. New types of content: advertising on UGC and niche audiences
   
6. Increasing home use: as broadband takes hold.
   
7. Globalisation: advertising local and international (ie, Facebook). SA users are currently the sixth biggest on Facebook in terms of users globally. And there are SA advertisers on Facebook – that's money flowing out the country, says Buckland. But the same works for SA publishers: they should be accepting international advertising.
   
8. Many content platforms: cellphones, Playstations, Internet-enabled fridges! “Content is being delivered to all Internet-enabled devices. Even the most sophisticated Internet fridge with a panel delivers advertising and you can download recipes… it will in the future be impossible to come across a digital device not connected to the Internet,” Buckland explained.

Andrew Falbert and Tom Accquaviva of Nielsen//Netratings in the UK were on hand and spoke about the rules of online engagement and how increased application of streaming video, sound and new flash applications meant that the measurement of online users and advertising was changing. Quality time spent online was becoming measureable and as important as the number of unique users/browsers (individual users/readers) a website had.

Falbert explained that Web 2.0 allows streaming content on your website, desktop and that different metrics are needed to measure online content.

Time is key

“Time spent online is key… we need to move away from measurement metrics of numbers to volume of activity.” In order to measure reach and exposure of online advertising, measurement needs to delve deeper as different website visitors have different levels of activity, interest and engagement with your content and advertising.

While page impressions and unique users are still accurate and important measurements, the addition of metrics to measure time spent online will provide even more quality information for advertisers, particularly as technologies and applications for the web grow even more sophisticated.

Measurement will also cover all applications: from gaming to online TV and podcasting, blogs and other social media applications.

Accquaviva cautioned that not all websites would be moving over to flash applications tomorrow, but that in order to understand user engagement with a website in the future, new page view metrics would change to accommodate new interactive technologies.

He provided his thoughts around user engagement:

1. Online content is being consumed in more streamlined ways (ie, streaming/video/AJAX) as opposed to static pages of reloaded content.
   
2. As technology advances, the page view is becoming a less relevant guide of the volume of user activity/engagement.
   
3. Popularity (unique browsers) is still king. It is still the primary method for benchmarking sites in terms of reach/exposure, however, it tells us nothing about the volume of activity.
   
4. Different metrics tell a different story of engagement; however, time provides the greatest method of benchmarking across all sites/sectors.
   
5. Obviously, comparing all the metrics together gives one a most all round picture of the most engaging sites.

•The Online Publishers Association of South Africa (OPA) is a grouping of South Africa's most prominent online publishers. Bizcommunity.com is a member, along with other publishers, search engines and online service providers. All our stats and user metrics are measured by Nielsen//Netratings, the global Internet measurement standard. For more on the OPA, online stats for South Africa and OPA members, go to www.opa.org.za.