3.34 PM Thursday, 28 March 2024
  • City Fajr Shuruq Duhr Asr Magrib Isha
  • Dubai 04:57 06:11 12:27 15:53 18:37 19:51
28 March 2024

Media to evolve with scientific approach

Top social portals such as Facebook and Twitter are financially viable for investors. (SUPPLIED)

Published
By Vigyan Arya

In a year-end special report predicting the outlook for media in 2010, Nielsen has forecast a sustainable growth for the sector based on new technology.

With 2009 casting the gloomiest of clouds, with slashed budgets and revised strategies to address the new reality, industry professionals believe that media will evolve and emerge with more scientific approach and accountable strategies, said the report.

It asserted that the lessons learned during recession will likely pay-off in the year ahead. For example, the report said, advertisers have started to look at the need for accountability metrics beyond the simple "click-through" and on to campaign-specific performance. They have also started to embrace burgeoning social networks and consumer-generated media to bring consumers closer to a product or brand.

The report also predicted top advertising trends for the coming year. 

- Optimising media convergence is a top priority. A better understanding of media convergence will manifest in order to deliver a better return on investment. The ability to accurately measure activity and link online ads to offline purchasing behaviour will be critical.

- New models emerge to take advantage of smartphones. Accurate mobile measurement will be required to stay head of the snowballing growth of that media platform.

- More cross-media ad campaigns surface. The massive growth of online video games played and shared online leads the way for more successful interactive and cross-media advertising campaigns to appear. Growth in the adoption of this innovative advertising across screens and activities will increase.

- Commercialisation of social networking hubs increase. Social media will provide a new sales channel for establishing product awareness and commercialising brands to better support traditional advertising or text-based ads.

- More interesting and interactive online ads appear. Increased use of more creative advertising and content models online such as video, attention-seeking page takeover ads and mechanisms for greater interactivity will drive the next era of web development.

As media professionals highlighted the emergence and dependence on social media portals, their economic non-viability was a matter of concern for financers, said the report.

However, the recent turn of events have established some of the leading social portals such as the Facebook and Twitter as commercially viable and financially feasible for investors.

This fiscal reality, not only gave a fresh breath of life to these neo-tools, but enhanced faith and confidence of establishments to use them as an essential part of their communication strategy. The message for 2010 and beyond is very clear – social media is here to stay and is gaining faith of even the most skeptical marketeers, said the report.

In a dedicated column on the digital world, Nielsen Online Division CEO John Burbank said the future of virtual world will be defined by the consumers and will be in total control of users.

According to him, three major factors contribute to a sharp increase and a steep turn in the usage of the net world. They are:

- The audience is the centre of everything. "We have given them metrics – clicks, impressions, page views — but those metrics lack context and value and don't relate to their customers. In the audience-centric Web, metrics will answer traditional marketing questions: Who saw my ad? Did I affect the way they think about my product? Did they actually buy more?"

- Online is no longer an island. Sophisticated marketers will be able to advertise across channels, supported by the transparency and efficiency of consistent media metrics. A brand's measure of online impact will be the same as on TV or mobile or print. Online publishers will be able to compete – on a level-playing field – across media.

- The richer the consumer data, the richer the business opportunity. Nielsen has helped the largest and most successful marketers and media companies in the world grow their businesses. Their market shares have grown through a richer and deeper understanding of their consumers. Whether it i's reaching men aged 18 to 24, women with incomes of more than $150,000 (Dh550,500), heavy users of Tide or Hispanic teens, the match of consumer need to marketing message starts with the audience. In the audience-centric web, that richness of insight will now be available to online marketers, just as it has been offline, said Burbank.

The report also defined top entertainment trends for 2010 and said future seems to be extensively dictated by the digital world.

- Digital media shows solid growth. Digital albums could reach 50 per cent of all album sales in 2010. Digital books, downloaded to devices such as Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook, also present a new opportunity for publishers to combine text, music and video to create hybridizations of traditional products.

- New functionality and price drops increase gaming usage. Playing off the success of the Wii, motion-sensor peripherals will add lifespan to the lifecycle of Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles. Additionally, console price drops and the integration of additional entertainment functionality, such as Facebook, Netflix and other video rental, music streaming or game purchase options will boost usage for each of the three game systems.

- Rehashed, replayed games risk saturating the gaming market. A number of new game releases are queued up for the first six months of 2010. While previous releases of most of the popular games have been popular, the industry appears to be leaning on tried and true franchises versus risking unhealthy margins launching new IP.

- Sports globalisation offers a new range of opportunities. The Football World Cup in mid-year is bound to draw strong viewership on the back of the huge ratings garnered by the Beijing Summer games last year, and the World Cup.

- Piracy is a major concern for artists, authors and publishers. Continued growth of new and existing digital formats will intensify concerns of illegal usage, especially during hard economic times when consumers feel pressure not to spend.

On 2009 entertainment trends, the report said while many consumers cut back their spending on entertaining outside of the home in 2009, that did not necessarily translate to increases inside the home.

Consumer adoption of Blu-ray increased – up 80 per cent YTD – and the popularity of DVD rentals grew, yet there was a decline in the sell-through of packaged media. DVD sales are down 13 per cent, marking the third consecutive year of declining DVD sales. Sales of physical CDs have declined 20 per cent, while digital album sales increased 17 per cent, and they continue to show growth.

Meanwhile, books sales were down a modest three per cent from 2008, with fantasy, suspense, thrillers, action, adventure and adult fiction showing the only growth. Audio sales have also declined 20 per cent, said the report.

Gaming continued to draw more players into the current generation consoles. Console usage continued to migrate from last generation consoles such as the Xbox, PS2 and Gamecube to the current generation of XBox 360, PS3 and Wii, accounting for more than 52 per cent of usage by October 2009 (up from 47.9 per cent in January), said the report.

Summarising on the shopping trends and habits, the report said purchasing decisions in 2010 will be affected by factors such as brand innovation, retailer assortment, proliferation of store brands, and healthy eating preferences.

Throughout the recession in 2009, retailers and manufacturers have stepped up efforts to bring about innovation that seize the moment and "drive the recession wave" rather than "ride the recession wave".

Winners in the coming year will continue to innovate in the form of new formats, service offerings and differentiated products, said the report.

Nielsen, the media market research firm, has been the pursuing this for years and invested more than a billion dollars acquiring companies and developing products that help clients understand and measure their online audiences, said Burbank.


Winning Brands

As the economy improves, value is still important, but smart marketers are differentiating brands through innovation with new products, flavours, packaging and with marketing/media campaigns with a heavy emphasis on social media to build rapid awareness and product trial, said Nielsen in a report.

Brands that fail to innovate may also fail to win buyers back from store brands, it added.

Buyer focus

Online price wars and the squeeze on in-store assortment will fuel large and small manufacturers to give consumers options to buy direct from manufacturers or from online services such as Amazon, souq.com and dubizzle, said Nielsen in a report.

 

Keep up with the latest business news from the region with the Emirates Business 24|7 daily newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter, please click here.