Hongkong.com is to raise advertising revenue by repositioning the
company from a dotcom to an old economy business through acquisitions of
traditional media corporations worldwide.
Mr Rudy Chan, chief executive officer of hongkong.com, told CReATION the
company would seek to acquire brick and mortar businesses, which would
allow it to offer a cross platform channel to advertisers.
He said the decision to acquire Miller Freeman Asia's travel and tourism
print publications was based on this new formation.
Mr Chan said: "We are essentially looking to fulfill customer
demand.
It has now become important to link online and offline businesses. More
and more of our advertisers are asking for cross platform
advertising.
It is more effective. In five to 10 years there won't be any such thing
as an Internet company because what we'll see is a combination (of
business models) ... And we have to move quickly because the market is
not so kind anymore."
He said hongkong.com, which has US$500 million in cash, expected
further acquisitions to be announced in the near future, but declined to
give details.
He also forecast an increase in ecommerce revenue from less than 10 per
cent to 30 per cent following potential acquisitions of traditional
businesses in the next three years.
He said hongkong.com's next goal would be to establish and retain a
wider user base on the Web through online promotions and
advertising.
He further noted advertising would have to evolve to comprise media from
the old and new economy for effective marketing campaigns.
"There is some misconception at the moment about the online advertising
industry. As it was mostly driven by the dotcoms, which are now in
trouble, it has an impact on the overall ad spending ... At the moment
all ad dollars are going to the big portals. These aren't going to close
down and this is where people are doing most of the advertising so I
think the future of the industry will be strong," he said.
Findings from the Nielsen//NetRatings BannerTrack service ranked
hongkong.com as the second leading online advertiser in Hong Kong after
Next Media Interactive.
Banner ads on the site, which has a user base of 1.2 million, achieved
more than 37.7 million impressions in September, with a unique audience
number of 420,016.
