NewsLine End Of Year Round-Up: New Media
January
News that the UK was the the world’s ninth largest broadband country set 2004 off to an optimistic start in January, with research firm Point Topic stating that broadband is “clearly established as one of the fastest growing new technologies in history” (see UK Becomes A High Speed Haven For Internet Users).
Online advertisers were also given food for thought, with research from Dynamic Logic claiming that interactive internet advertising is more successful than traditional online methods when it comes to generating brand awareness and intention to purchase. According to the research firm executions such as radio buttons, sketchpads and rollover creatives generate a richer environment for consumers, which leads to a personal and more positive association with the brand (see Interactive Online Ads Outperform Traditional Methods).
Elsewhere mobile technology proved increasingly popular, with the Mobile Data Association reporting a record 111 million text messages being sent on New Year’s Day (see Record Number Of Text Messages Sent On New Year’s Day). Mobile internet was also popular, with the MDA reporting that total WAP page impressions had risen to a record 947 million (see Mobile Phone Users View Record Number Of WAP Pages).
February
February saw the electronic media industry come together to implement a range of standards and procedures designed to further drive accountability for the medium. The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (Jicwebs) began the month with a new set of universal guidelines for the certification of active registered users, advertising metrics and streamed content (see New Standards Make Electronic Media More Accountable).
Meanwhile the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported a staggering growth in the UK’s online advertising market, which was declared to be double the size of cinema in February. According to the IAB, online advertising spend topped £151 million in the first half of 2003, giving the sector a record market share of 2% (see Internet Advertising Reaches Record Levels).
Paid-for search listings in particular saw impressive growth, becoming the second most popular online advertising format, accounting for 36% of the total internet ad market in the UK (see MediaTel Insight: Search Targeted Marketing Success Continues).
Telecoms giant BT continued to place broadband internet services at the top of its agenda, pledging to make high-speed connections available to ninety percent of the UK population by the summer, as part of its plan to achieve total coverage of the UK by 2005. Pierre Danon, chief executive of BT Retail, claimed the telecoms giant would have invested £22 million by 2005 in setting up public private partnerships to roll out broadband in less densely populated areas (see BT Aims For Total UK Broadband Coverage By 2005).
However, despite continued optimism in the new media sector, controversy continued to dog the latest initiatives. The UK Association Of Online Publishers hit headlines with its rejection of ‘unsatisfactory’ plans by the Audit Bureau of Circulations to include figures for e-publications on its upcoming print certificates (see Association Of Online Publishers Attacks ABC Digital Decision).
MSN also dipped its toe into controversial waters, with the decision to ban pop-up advertising on its network of websites. The company announced its plan to phase out the sale of pop-ups and pop-unders after customer research discovered they are a cause of major irritation to the majority of internet users (see MSN Bans Pop-Up Advertising Across Entire Network).
The reasoning for MSN’s decision was further underlined by research released by Bunnyfoot Universality demonstrating that internet users have learnt to almost completely ignore the existence of pop-up advertising (see Internet Users Completely Ignore Pop-Up Advertising).
March
BT began a series of price battles that would run throughout 2004 in February, slashing the price of its cheapest broadband service to less than £20 per month. The move was made in an attempt to increase the take-up of high-speed internet access across the UK and would be aped by several service providers in the coming months (see BT Launches New Cut-Price Broadband Service).
The continued growth of digital media was put at the top of the media planning agenda by Jerry Buhlmann, chief executive of Carat International, who predicted that a fundamental shift in media planning would occur by the end of the decade as more people climbed onboard the digital bandwagon (see Digital Media Will Cause Major Marketing Shift).
The growth of the UK’s internet advertising industry was underlined by advance figures seen by NewsLine, showing record revenues well over £300 million for the medium during 2003. Although full-year figures were not due to be published until the end of April, NewsLine revealed in March that adspend had risen as high as £350 million, representing growth of almost 80% on the previous year’s figure of £197 million (see Online Expected To See Revenue Reach £350 Million).
Elsewhere, research by the Association of Online Publishers revealed that internet users react more positively to advertising on websites they have a strong relationship with, claiming that context is key to effective online campaigns (see Research Shows Context Is Key For Online Advertising).
The seemingly unstoppable rise in text messaging continued during March with levels reaching an unprecedented 2.1 billion for the month, according to the latest figures from the Mobile Data Association (see Text Messaging Reaches Record Levels In March).
April
April saw an optimistic start for internet giant Yahoo!, with research from Nielsen NetRatings indicating that the company would gain almost five million extra visitors per month with the acquisition of price comparison site Kelkoo (see Yahoo Set For Massive Boost With Kelkoo Deal).
Elsewhere internet search specialist Overture announced a deal with two of the UK’s largest mobile networks to provide web-style advertiser-sponsored search links to mobile phones across the country (see Overture To Bring Web Advertising To Mobiles).
April also saw Ask Jeeves, the UK’s third largest search engine, announce plans to remove all banner advertising from its website in an attempt to improve user loyalty and satisfaction. Until recently banners were the most widely used advertising format on the company’s site, but the firm claimed that they were turning users away and would be phased out by the end of the year (see Ask Jeeves Ditches Banners From UK Website).
May
May kicked off with a damning appraisal of online advertisers by online marketing agency Panlogic. According to research by the company, advertisers are failing to connect with young people online and are simply too cautious to target them effectively. The company claimed that many advertisers are too conservative in hooking young people and keeping them interested. It also stated that ‘schizophrenic’ internet behaviour makes young people very difficult to predict and harder to accurately target online (see Research Shows Online Advertisers Out Of Touch With Youth).
Elsewhere, BT looked set to boost competition in the broadband market with plans to slash the price it charges rival internet service providers to use its local exchanges by 70%, ahead of a wide-ranging investigation by Ofcom (see BT Reveals Plans To Slash Broadband Price For Rivals).
Meanwhile Wanadoo, the UK’s largest internet service provider, secured a high-profile deal to promote its range of internet services in more than 85 Maplin Electronics stores across the country, providing the company with a high street presence to help attract new customers (see Wanadoo Bolsters High-Street Presence With Maplin Deal).
Rival high-speed internet provider Telewest Broadband also extended its broadband services in May, announcing a milestone 500,000th customer and marking the achievement with with a year’s free connection for its lucky half-millionth customer (see Telewest Nets Half A Million Broadband Users).
New figures from DoubleClick indicated that the amount of rich media advertising had increased by more than 50% in the 12 months to May, accounting for well over 40% of all ads served globally by the company during the first quarter of the year (see Use Of Rich Media Advertising Continues To Grow).
June
New media appeared to be going from strength to strength at the beginning of June, as research from Wanadoo claimed that broadband internet had become the second most popular entertainment medium in the UK and was fast catching up with television. The company’s Fishbowl 2 survey asked 1000 people to record their media consumption over a two week period, revealing that many users are switching off the television in favour of using the internet for more than two hours a week (see Broadband Internet Eating Into TV Consumption).
Meanwhile, BT continued its drive to connect more remote areas of the nation to its broadband network, launching a new satellite service designed to increase up-take of high-speed internet amongst those in rural areas without access to the its existing ADSL network (see BT Launches Satellite Broadband To Boost Rural Up-Take).
Elsewhere, i-level, the independently-owned digital agency, launched a new online rating points system that will allow marketers to compare the reach of their online advertising campaigns with their traditional media activity. The new system uses exactly the same methodology as rating points for television and tells advertisers what proportion of the available online audience their campaign has reached during its life-span (see i-level Launches Online Rating Points System). The company also expanded its offering to advertisers with the launch of a new specialist division dedicated entirely to search targeted marketing (see i-level Launches Dedicated Search Marketing Division).
Despite the continuing flurry of excitement from those championing the broadband cause other areas of new media were reportedly being neglected in June, with mobile technology provider Empower Interactive claiming that advertising agencies had failed to capitalise on the full potential of SMS marketing, mistakenly believing that consumer acceptance of the fledgling medium is much lower than it actually is (see Advertising Agencies Fail To Capitalise On SMS Marketing).
June also saw the closure of Teletext’s internet site and digital cable services confirmed, with the company stating that the decision would result in around 45 redundancies at the Daily Mail & General Trust owned company. The broadcaster claimed that both its internet site and “walled garden” digital cable services would be discontinued due to “little potential for commercial success” and claimed that, although the teletext.co.uk website attracted several hundred thousand monthly users, there were no realistic prospects of it delivering an acceptable return (see Teletext Scraps Digital Cable And Internet Services).
July
Media super-regulator Ofcom began July with the appointment of Peter Black, an experienced telecoms executive, as an independent telecoms adjudicator to oversee the watchdog’s blueprint for growth of broadband in the UK. The regulator stated that it would shift its focus from rollout and coverage of broadband services to local loop unbundling in order to encourage greater competition between internet providers and telephony companies (see Ofcom Appoints Adjudicator To Boost Broadband Competition).
Meanwhile BT announced plans to take on satellite broadcasting giant BSkyB with a pay-per-view television service over its broadband network. The move would also bring the telecoms heavyweight into competition with cable operators and the newly created HomeChoice broadband and on demand TV service (see BT Plans To Take On BSkyB With Broadband TV Service).
BT’s move was later echoed by internet service provider Wanadoo, which announced plans to provide on demand television content to subscribers through its new Livebox wireless broadband product (see Wanadoo To Offer Customers TV Content On Demand).
More research was released in July to indicate that pop-up advertising is less effective than first believed. Research firm Bunnyfoot Universality claimed that nine out of ten click-throughs to pop-up adverts on websites occur by accident, a move which results in mistrust and confusion amongst users (see Majority Of Internet Users Click On Pop-Ups By Mistake).
Internet shopping site Kelkoo later became the latest internet operator to drop pop-up adverts with a a revamped version of its popular website across Europe, shunning the intrusive format and reducing the impact of its banner adverts (see Kelkoo Drops Pop-Ups From Shopping Comparison Site).
A new report from the World Association Of Newspapers published in July indicated that the migration of classified advertising from print to the internet is much slower than many predicted, but is relentless nonetheless (see Migration Of Print Ads To Internet Slower Than Expected).
Elsewhere, interactive TV specialist YooMedia acquired embattled mobile marketing and technology firm Whoosh, in an effort to build its mobile portfolio and extend the use of the company’s technology (see YooMedia Acquires Whoosh To Boost Mobile Portfolio).
August
August saw encouraging figures for the new media industry revealed by Mintel, as the company reported that a further three million people had gone online over the last three months to take the total number of internet users in the UK to almost 28 million. The figures revealed one of the largest growth spurts for internet penetration in the UK, which jumped from 50% of all adults to 57% in the second quarter of 2004, defying the widespread belief that the market had already peaked.
Meanwhile research specialists Dynamic Logic recommended that new products and fledgling brands should consider using the internet as a launch medium when planning their first campaigns, as it can quickly raise awareness while proving cost effective (see Internet Advertising Is Most Effective For New Brands).
Internet advertising was also the recipient of praise from TradeDoubler, which claimed that the medium was quickly overtaking television with 84% of internet users claiming to have responded to an online advertisement (see Internet Advertising Set To Overtake Intrusive TV Ads).
Measurement of internet usage also received a boost in August, as BSkyB agreed to have its three main websites, Sky.com, Sky News Online and Sky Sports, audited on a monthly basis by ABC Electronic. The move represented a significant step forward for supporters of industry agreed standards for the reports in web traffic (see ABC Electronic Bags BSkyB For Web Traffic Audits).
BT continued to laud its broadband internet services, claiming that broadband Britain had come another step closer with the announcement that it now serves more than 3 million high-speed internet customers. The telecoms giant claimed to have signed up an average of around 6,000 new customers each day over the past six months, a move that helped it add more than one million ADSL connections to its existing wholesale broadband network (see BT Helps Broadband Britain Become A Reality).
Sports fans were amongst those most active online in August, with UK visits to Olympic websites surging ahead in the final week of the Games as Britain’s medal tally continued to rise according to data from web-statistics firm Hitwise (see British Olympic Success Drives Sports Fans Online).
September
September began with news that O˛ customers could soon be watching On The Buses on the bus, or shopping channels in the supermarket, as the mobile giant prepared to trial new technology with NTL’s broadcast division to bring multi-channel digital television to mobile phones (see NTL And O˛ To Bring Television To Mobile Phones).
New technology also threatened to encroach upon traditional radio listening, with the unveiling of a new breed of digital receiver capable of receiving internet radio without the need for a PC (see Internet Radio Without PCs Could Revolutionise Industry).
Meanwhile, BT continued the development of its TV via broadband product, and was reported to be in talks with some of the UK’s biggest broadcasters to provide content for the new service. The company was understood to be consulting the BBC, BSkyB and ITV about broadcasting their programmes via an on demand broadband-based network (see BT In Talks With Broadcasters Over Broadband TV).
October
The continuing price wars between broadband providers hit a new low in October, as telecoms giant BT announced a drop in price for its entry-level broadband service to £17.99 per month. The move brought BT into line with its competitors in the budget broadband market (see BT Slashes Broadband Price To Compete In Budget Market).
Online advertising spend continued to increase throughout October, and was reported to have rocketed by 76% in the first half of the year to just under £267 million, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (see Internet Adspend Rockets By 76% In First Half).
The IAB’s reports of an increase in internet ad spend were closely followed by reports from the Office of National Statistics that over half of UK households could access the internet from home in October (see Research Shows 52% of UK Households Now Online).
Meanwhile, BBC chairman Michael Grade reinforced the BBC’s commitment to creating a vibrant interactive television market, pledging to work more closely with the industry as a whole in order to create more diverse services for viewers (see BBC Pledges Continued Commitment To Interactive TV).
Mobile phone usage continued to go from strength to strength, with the Mobile Data Association reporting that almost half of all mobile customers could access the internet via their phones in October, while the number of WAP-enabled devices topping the 24 million mark in the three months to June, an increase of 45% on the previous quarter (see Half Of UK Mobile Customers Now Use WAP Services).
November
November saw the BBC launch its vision for a broadband Britain, calling on the Government and the new media industry to work together to avoid the creation of a ‘digital underclass’ (see BBC Sets Out Vision For Broadband Britain). According to the Corporation’s director of new media and technology, Ashley Highfield, ‘collaboration and co-operation’ of the industry’s key players was needed to launch a digital literacy campaign aimed at ‘those members of society who might find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide’.
Elsewhere the BBC announced plans to rein in its £111 million internet operations and close a raft of websites in response to criticism from the Graf review commissioned by the Government earlier in the year. The decision would later lead to a radical overhaul of the Corporation’s online operations, with those websites not linked to BBC programmes or programme genres forced to shut up shop (see BBC Announces Radical Shake-Up Of Online Operations).
Meanwhile, the Interactive Advertising Bureau appointed integrated brand and design agency Neoco Design to revamp its corporate identity and assist in the push to accelerate internet advertising spend (see IAB Appoints Agency To Boost Image In Online Push).
Later in the month Danny Meadows-Klue confirmed that he would step down as chief executive of the IAB to pursue other interests, although he would remain in his current post until a successor was found (see Meadows-Klue To Step Down As IAB Chief Executive). The IAB also participated as a consortium of online advertisers, agencies and researchers unveiled a global definition and standard for the measurement of online advertising (see IAB Sets Out Definition For Online Ad Measurement).
The European Internet Advertising Association was also busy during November, publishing research showing that the internet accounted for 20% of total media consumption in Europe, as the amount of time people spent online continued to increase rapidly (see Internet Now Accounts For 20% Of Media Consumption).
Home internet users were treated to news that super-fast connections could soon be a reality in November, with service provider UK Online launching a broadband service 16 times faster than the average high-speed package. The provider stated that the 8 megabyte broadband connection would be available to 4.4 million UK households, bringing ‘groundbreaking speed at a groundbreaking price’ (see UK Users Offered Broadband At 16 Times Standard Speed).
The increasing popularity of the internet was a cause for concern in some sectors, however, with new research from mediaedge:cia indicating that the traditional power of television advertising is being eroded by the increased use of the internet by consumers, with a direct transfer in consumption evident from television to the internet (see Internet Usage Eroding TV Ad Effectiveness). In addition, research from Millward Brown claimed that video advertising on the internet can deliver the same impact as television advertising (see Internet Video Advertising Rivals TV For Impact).
December
Internet service provider Tiscali became the latest internet and communications company to roll out a TV service to its customers in December, showing exclusive content, cult entertainment and bite-size programme packages to its broadband internet subscribers at no extra charge (see Tiscali Jumps On Broadband TV Bandwagon).
Meanwhile, Channel 4 dipped its toe into the broadband TV waters with confirmation that it was preparing an internet-only documentaries channel for launch in 2005. The proposal was intended to boost the broadcaster’s public service output and meet Government requirements (see Channel 4 Plans Online Documentary Channel).
However, growing optimism surrounding broadband ventures was deflated somewhat by by research by British Telecom, indicating that the digital divide in Britain will continue to exclude millions of computer illiterate adults well into the next decade and beyond (see BT Claims Digital Divide Will Exist For Decades).
Media research specialist Nielsen Entertainment entered new territory in December, announcing a partnership with video game advertising network Massive Incorporated to provide accountability and measurement for campaigns run within computer games via Massive’s network to game fans around the world (see Nielsen Launches In-Game Ad Measurement System), while the mobile phone industry saw spectacular growth during 2004, with text messaging bulk reaching record breaking numbers and 50% of consumers now using the latest internet enabled handsets (see Record Texts Spell Success For Mobile Industry In 2004).
Elsewhere, news came that Britain had seen the largest growth in broadband take up in Europe, adding 762,000 lines in the third quarter of 2004 to reach 5.1 million lines by September, according to broadband analysis company, Point Topic (see UK Leaders In European Broadband Growth).
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