Media Convergence: A Need-to-Know Marketing Phenomenon from AdChina

SHANGHAI, Feb. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- As dark clouds hang over many markets amid the Eurozone crisis, the outlook from China could not be more different. At the recent 2011 "China Revealed" roundtable held in Shanghai, eight industry executives discussed China's competitive landscape and how the winning strategy needs to be adjusted in the new economic environment. Some of the issues that were discussed included how to leverage cross-media strategy to answer the changing consumer behavior and media cost structure, as driven by governmental policies.

Jing Pan, vice-president of marketing at AdChina, the leading technology-driven internet advertising platform in China, said that the internet is actually advantageous in the situation of change because "we can just pull out data from the system, and analyze the consumer behavior by cities, understand what's the most optimized strategy to reach them, and then deploy large-scale campaigns easily leveraging technology."

Jing also mentioned that AdChina recently launched the eTV2.0 cross-media advertising planning system to answer the challenges and opportunities of the changing environment.

In the last few years, media consumption habits in China have changed drastically. Television used to be the go-to channel as it was in every home and watched by all, but the trend has shifted and as we see greater computer and mobile phone ownership the power of the TV screen in homes is being surpassed. This is not news to many brand-name advertisers who are all too well aware of the change. The emergence of a large number of new media formats, including internet and mobile terminals, has driven advertisers to revise and seek better allocation of their advertising budgets in order to command the same level of consumer attention as in the past.

Compared to other new media, the cost of TV advertising has sky-rocketed. To gain or even just to maintain gross rating points (GRP) using the same budget has become a real challenge today. To deal with this, advertisers are increasingly turning their attention to the internet as a place where brands are able to achieve better advertising effects and reach using a smaller or existing budget. As a result, a convergence between TV and the internet has meant a boom in advertising through online videos, which are seen to be more effective than combining TV with other traditional media.

According to data from the 2011 Chinese Market and Media Survey (CMMS), an average person in China spends more than two hours a day watching online videos, and those between the ages of 15 and 34 spend an average of 2.06 hours watching online videos every day compared to regular TV, which averages 2.56 hours per day. An increase in online video placement is able to raise media reach rates by up to six per cent, which suggests that the internet plays a strong complementary role to TV advertising.

Despite the benefits of combining TV and internet advertising, there are several challenges facing advertisers today. These include how to properly plan and allocate budgets for TV and internet advertising. How to get the best results from cross-media advertising when only a limited budget is available? How to solve the overlapping problem between the two media channels? And in terms of data, how can advertisers find the perfect docking point between TV and internet advertising, or even find a basis for comparison and reference between the two?

It is important to be able to answer these questions as TV and the internet continue to integrate. And for the future of the industry and business, companies must find ways to address these problems.

As an example of what is needed, one of the ways AdChina have helped advertisers to deal with these challenges is by developing the eTV2.0 cross-media advertising planning system. The system uses TV advertising terminology to compare the results of web advertising placements, and uses those results to plan future campaigns. The system is able to help advertisers to effectively deliver their ad campaigns to a larger audience for more or less the same budget. To achieving the above purposes, the eTV2.0 system relies on a vast amount of real online advertising data. It analyzes historical internet campaign placement parameters and their relationship with costs, and combines the cost-reach correlations with the TV media to make predictions on future cross-media campaigns.

The system is based on a data fusion model using the homologous data, allowing effective integration of a large number of both TV and online video viewers. This helps advertisers to extend their reach to a larger audience with a reduced budget while maintaining the same level of audience coverage.

The eTV2.0 system performs in-depth evaluations of different target audiences, and provides an effective solution that optimizes budgets while increasing positive brand perceptions for advertising agencies and advertisers.

As we see stronger convergence between TV and the internet, it will be increasingly important to introduce tools that make media planning more efficient. A system that is able to automatically generate the coverage rate, recommend the optimal budget allocation and facilitate the decision-making process will be valuable, and it's these sorts of tools that will help the industry to grow strong into the future.

SOURCE AdChina.com