Key publishers from Hong Kong's online scene, including Apple Daily website Atnext, ET Net, SCMP.com, She.com and TVB.com, as well as regional titles such as BusinessWeek, Forbes and Time, joined together with major portals and agencies at a special roundtable convened earlier this month.
Participants at the event were urged to confront issues such as creative standards, the dearth of information on this area and the need to overhaul the way online ads are traded. Online media currently accounts for just over three per cent of total advertising spend, according to MindShare estimates. Advocates of the online medium argued that this represents a significant lost opportunity, given that the internet reaches over 40 per cent of Hong Kong residents over the age of 12, according to statistics from Nielsen's Media Index.
"We have the infrastructure in Hong Kong, but we have not come close to realising its potential," said Sean Rach, managing director of OgilvyOne Hong Kong, as well as chairman of the 4As' interactive and direct committee.
Issues such as the absence of standard ad sizes, which can significantly hike costs as agencies have to reformat ads for different websites, represent an artificial barrier that could be resolved through greater industry co-operation, Rach told Media. Resizing ads can account for 20 per cent of an agency's time working on an online campaign, he said. Rach also pointed to a lack of understanding as another brake on the development of online marketing, which the 4As is tackling with a new, paid, 12-week training programme that launched in the same week as the roundtable. A second class aimed at clients is also planned. "We understand how we as agencies need to improve but we also need to help clients too," Rach said.
"As an industry, if we're going to be one of the major media, we've got to be better," said SCMP.com publisher Christopher Axberg, one of the attendees at the roundtable event. "We are a growing medium. We have got to set a precedent."
