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SINGAPORE: Traditional advertising on radio, television and print
still leads in the advertising world but online ads are gaining a
foothold in this area as Internet giant Yahoo! takes center stage
with its own online and mobile advertising solution.
At the Yahoo! Southeast Asia Advertising Summit
here at the island city-state, Ken Mandel, Yahoo! Southeast Asia
managing director, expressed confidence on the company’s latest
approach in new media advertising citing Yahoo’s stronghold of not
less than 53 million unique users in Southeast Asia alone.
“Online media is increasingly becoming a part
of the multimedia fix,” Mandel said.
It comes at a time where advertisers,
particularly in many Asian countries, are not keen on spending money
on new media advertising as compared to the conventional ad
platforms.
With nary a mention of the unsolicited hostile
takeover bid of software giant Microsoft several weeks ago, the
entire summit was a preview of what Yahoo! will offer in the coming
months in terms of online and mobile advertising.
“Yahoo! is really going to transform the
[online] advertisers’ experience,” said Prashant Mehta, Yahoo!
vice president for advertiser and publisher group for emerging
markets. “It’s not just about search. It’s really about
delivering an integrated solution under one umbrella.”
The thrust of Yahoo!’s advertising initiative
revolves in a unique integrated approach in search, display and
mobile advertising.
Sponsored search, a pay-per-click advertising
model used on search engines, advertising networks, websites and
blogs, leads this scheme in combination with traditional and
well-established online display ad platforms as well as mobile
advertising.
In line with this, Yahoo! is trying to lessen
the friction often experienced by advertisers when placing their ads
online.
Codenamed “Panama,” the new platform will
provide advertisers an easier way to enable ad placements online and
further tap relevant advertising opportunities—high opportunities
that include those using portable digital devices that can connect
to the Internet.
In the case of mobile advertising, Yahoo! is
betting big on mobile phones and other portable Internet devices, as
a great source for revenue both for the company and advertisers as
contents for these gadgets continue to grow exponentially.
In a research released by International Data
Corp. (IDC) early this year, Asia has almost 700 million mobile
phone subscribers with about 190 million accessing data services (SMS,
MMS and Internet) through their phones in 2005. By 2008, IDC is
expecting the numbers to grow an estimated 1.20 billion mobile phone
users with about 400 million mobile data users.
Even while mobile, content matters
Today, people are not only using their portable
communication devices for voice and texting but also for accessing
the Internet. It is but important that mobile phones will be able to
provide rich content as well.
In a presentation provided by Claus Mortensen,
digital marketplace and new media principal at IDC, cited the
ever-changing businesscape of the digital marketplace where new
Internet-based business models are starting to replace the
traditional ones. Rich media content is essential as Web 2.0
services are spreading beyond the desktop computer.
“Now, mobiles phones are used to view websites
and transact business,” Mortensen said.
In the Philippines alone, mobile subscribers are
pegged at no less than 40-million, greatly outpacing the number of
computer users. In fact, a number of Filipinos are already doing
commerce through their mobile phones as exemplified by thriving
e-business platforms such as “PasaLoad” and G-Cash.
By 2012, IDC predicts 800 million people in Asia
will be accessing data and do business through their mobile phones.
It just makes sense that Yahoo! is already eyeing the potentials of
the mobile phone to generate revenues for the Sunnyvale, California
company where streaming and/or downloaded videos, mobile TV, as well
as instant messaging and social networking are fast becoming a major
part of the mobile digital lifestyle.
“There are more than 500 million Yahoo! users
worldwide; we want to be the “starting point” and the
“must-buy”; we are going to connect publishers, advertisers and
consumers, and we’re going to create a friction-free digital
marketplace,” Mandel said. “At the end of the day, Web 2.0 is
all about making the user’s experience better and easier.”
-- Jing Garcia
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