Local online marketing intelligence firm to go global
Local online marketing intelligence firm to go global
By ComputerWorld Hong Kong Staff | Apr 14, 2009
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PrintCWHK: Why online marketing intelligence?
Winston Law: Nowadays we see more companies with online marketing strategies. This trend is more obvious when businesses are affected by an economic downturn because online media is low cost, interactive, and provides measurable ROI.
According to survey results announced by Nielsen Media Research earlier this year, Internet media budgets are expected to increase from 6 percent to 8 percent. However, the average budget of each advertiser will fall to HK$17.8 million compared with HK$20.4 million last year.
At the same time, advertisers want to know the most effective online advertising platform, what their rivals are doing online and how much they spend, as well as online advertising trends in particular industries. An online marketing intelligence service provides answers to all these questions.
CWHK: How many Web sites are offering advertising space in Hong Kong?
WL: There are already more than 200 publishers. We call Web sites that offer advertising space “publishers.” In 2008, there were more than 4,000 advertisers (excluding Google ads) and more than 10,000 campaigns valued at more than HK$600 million.
CWHK: When was the company founded?
WL: Admomo was founded in 2007. We have a team of 30 people. Our Hong Kong office is Admomo’s R&D base while the content team in Shenzhen is responsible for inputting content like advertising slogans, which then become searchable data for our customers.
Our crawler automatically searches for new campaigns and updates the server. But data like slogans must be compiled and presented manually in a format friendly to users.
CWHK: Who are some of your competitors?
WL: The major one is AC Nielsen. Including us, there are only three companies that offer global data [about online advertising campaigns].
CWHK: How do you differentiate?
WL: Admomo’s user interface is user-friendly. Our data are organized according to industry, advertiser, products, and publishers. Many of our rivals only show banner images, which aren’t useful to users.
We also provide product/campaign comparison while our competitors don’t and their customers have to consolidate reports manually for comparison.
Our products are [available] both in English and the local languages used in markets where we have presence. We also team with Alexa which provides traffic data and offer customers more detailed campaign and/or traffic comparison.
CWHK: What is your partner strategy?
WL: Besides traffic data providers like Alexa, we want to work with channel partners overseas.
CWHK: Who are your customers? Are most of them from Hong Kong or overseas?
WL: At the moment our customers come from Asia Pacific. They include portal sites and gambling companies.
CWHK: How much does it cost to use your services?
WL: For Hong Kong data only, it costs HK$40,000 a year for one account. Australian data costs HK$80,000 annually because there are about 600 publishers in the country, which is a higher number than Hong Kong.
CWHK: How much have you invested in R&D?
WL: Around HK$1 million. We are also in the process of applying for funds from the Small Entrepreneur Research Assistance Program (SERAP) offered by the Hong Kong government’s Innovation and Technology Fund.
CWHK: How’s the Hong Kong online advertising market different from others?
WL: Hong Kong firms are conservative when it comes to online campaigns. Despite increasing spending in online ads, Hong Kong is still behind markets like Australia and Japan where online campaign budgets are more than 20 percent of their marketing spending.
CWHK: What’s the range of online campaign costs in Hong Kong ?
WL: They range from HK$4 to HK$230 for every 1,000 impression.
CWHK: What’s your targeted customer base?
WL: 2,000 customers worldwide in two years.
CWHK: What’s your expansion plan?
WL: We will launch our service in China in about two months, and in Australia, Singapore, and Taiwan at a later stage. We plan to cover 10 countries within this year and 15 by mid-2010.
CWHK: How much will this expansion plan cost you?
WL: We will only need to add a few people to our content team. I don’t think it will jack up our cost significantly.
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