MindShare HK survey reveals rock-bottom recall of online ads

Seventy per cent of Hong Kong university students who spend time surfing the 'Net report that they were unable to recall any Web advertising whatsoever - this is just one of the findings of a survey conducted by MindShare and The Young Agency of the Hong Kong Baptist University's School of Communications. The study aimed to determine the Web usage habits of the SAR's tertiary students. Polling 405 students from seven Hong Kong universities in February and March this year, research revealed how the Internet's early adopters were getting to grips with this "cool medium". Seventy per cent of respondents reported sessions in cyberspace of up to two and a half hours per day, logging on for an average of five to seven days per week - and while 60 per cent said the Internet did not affect their newspaper and magazine buying habits, up to 40 per cent were ditching traditional mass media in favour of the 'Net. Students were also swapping time spent watching TV for surf time - consuming 42 per cent less TV and 24 per cent less radio. In addition, 37 per cent said the Internet had prompted them to slash their magazine readership, while 27 per cent admitted they now spend less time reading newspapers. And the trend isn't about to change, in the near future at least; as 55 per cent of students negated the possibility of boosting their print readership in the next three months. According to Mr Ralph Szeto, associate director of MindShare's digital arm, Mdigital, most alarming of all were the findings revealing that 70 per cent of all students polled could not recall seeing any online advertising. Up to four per cent of students had even banned ads altogether and installed their own ad filtration software. "The advertising recall is low and a lot of respondents said they ignored advertising on the Web, outright," Mr Szeto told CReATION. "From the agency and the creative side, we need to be working a lot harder to bring the creative up to scratch and grab people's attention," added MindShare Hong Kong managing director KK Tsang. One solution, noted Mr Szeto, was increased broadband access, beefing-up "the cool content in terms of the audio and visual elements". "When users have 56K modems they can't download a lot of good creative or TV commercials - but with broadband, sites will be more able to provide audio and visual impact". Proving that ecommerce is not yet poised to change the face of retail as we know it, student shoppers on the Web were few and far between with, at best, lukewarm purchasing habits. Although credit card usage was rampant after the second university year, when applicants are authorised to apply for cards, a meagre 13 per cent of students showed the confidence to flash their plastic and purchase on the 'Net. Of these, 28 per cent regularly participated in online auctions, 16 per cent traded in stocks online, nine per cent bought CDs, six per cent purchased videos and the four per cent minority spent on books. "Auctions are going well because they offer students the latest consumer electronics - like mobile phones and laptops - at what could potentially be a cheaper price," said Mr Szeto. While surfing the 'Net, most students (30 per cent) visited university websites, followed by 18 per cent who opted for portals and search engines, 13 per cent who frequented email sites such as Hotmail and 12 per cent who tapped into the research resources offered by online newspapers. In order to track ongoing usage trends on the 'Net, Mr Szeto said the collaboration with TYA would extend to a follow-up survey tracking the next university semester (Q3 and Q4).

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