INTERNET MEDIA: BuzzCity determined to snare lion's share of online adspend

Some 750,000 subscribers have signed up and with the majority coming from China, BuzzCity has become the biggest online community in that country. In the rapidly expanding online advertising market in Asia, a market projected to reach US$1.5 billion in 2003, BuzzCity, has set its sights on being a coveted gateway to ecommerce in the Asia-Pacific region. With a service that provides email updates from users' selected websites, BuzzCity's user base now numbers some 750,000 subscribers, with a majority of members from China. "This makes BuzzCity one of the largest online communities in the country," said BuzzCity CEO Dr Lai Kok Fung. The year-old Internet start-up company from Singapore also holds the unique distinction of having sold all its Web ad space purely on its ability to provide clients with a business model that targets individual users. Just over US$100,000 has so far been churned up on the advertising front since its initial marketing efforts began last July. Collecting revenue through newsletter sponsorship and 'run-of-site' advertising, BuzzCity VP of sales and marketing Hisham Isa was confident that its US$1 million sales target (beyond 2000) was achievable. Founded by Dr Lai, Lee Cjin Pheow, Clifford Chew and Andrew Lim, the team began working on technologies involving vertical Web portals and information tracking. Their efforts witnessed the formation of BuzzCity early last year. Within three months, the company received some US$1.8 million in venture funding from OCBC Wearnes & Walden Management and Singapore Press Holdings. Committed to being the "Internet's postman of choice", just over a third of the fund has been used to expedite BuzzCity's growth through dynamic marketing initiatives and towards building stronger partnerships with companies in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. "Our proprietary technology gives us an edge and an altogether different perspective (as compared to other Internet start-up companies)," said Mr Hisham. "The tool of the time has come and we are working with various channel network partners that will give our advertisers a larger reach. "By working with website advertising networks like SpaceAsia and FlyCast, we have representation in different countries and different industries." Some 750,000 subscribers have signed up and with the majority coming from China, BuzzCity has become the largest online community in that country. With its first round of data-mining results from Singapore and China just in, the benefits to advertisers as to how effective their Web advertising spend has been, will be dispatched to them in an independent audited report. Mr Hisham, an experienced marketer previously with Alam Teknokrat, Malaysia, where he helped conceptualise AltaVista AsiaWide service and Skali, hopes to capture the lion's share of the rapidly expanding online ad market through marketing and brand-building campaigns. "We spent approximately quarter of a million US dollars in '99 on advertising and PR work," he said. "This year, our budget is up to US$1 million and will cover more print ads, radio and TVCs." To make the site a portal of choice, the company intends to expand its scope considerably. "On our part, we also intend to do more affiliate marketing programmes with more brand partners like Asia1 and CNet Asia," he said. Also in the pipeline are new products for wireless application products field like PDAs (palm-tops), mobile phones and pagers. Although Web-savvy advertising agencies are still in an infant stage, Hisham says there has been tremendous growth in the area especially over the last year. "Website advertising networks are already collating audience data to help them sell."

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