Online marketing: the future of advertising

Pakistan’s first digital media summit titled “Digimark 2011-Pakistan” was held by Training, Event and Consultancy (TEC) on Friday at the Royal Palm. TEC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Shahid A Zia explained the phenomenon of Digimark in his welcome address to the participants. He said the TEC had been established to enhance the capacities of individuals and organisations to survive and flourish successfully in a dynamic business environment.
He said the TEC would continue to conduct regular conferences on contemporary issues with a focus on bridging gaps between the public and corporate sectors, research institutes, universities and subsequently developing a culture of creating and sharing knowledge. Digimark 2011 delivered significant value to the corporate sector with a complete and full perspective of online media marketing techniques. Guest speakers included Badar Khushnood, the country consultant for Google Pakistan.
His presentation was based on the Google Advertising Ecosystem, in which he described how Google advertised, along with creating platforms and chances for young people online, such as Google Plus, etc. “We are making sure more and more traditional brand advertisers embrace search advertising as a way to build their brands online,” he said. This trend applied particularly to Google.com, but had extended to sites like YouTube, which was receiving millions of views per day and was “monetising” a billion videos each week.
Naseeb Networks CEO Monis Rehman presented on “Online Advertising Trends and the Local Publisher Perspective” while Strategic Alliancez Marketing VP Farhan Mirza, presented on “Social Media and Advertising Models – Taking Brands to the Next Level”. He highlighted that brands must keep a social media presence. Appearing on the most used websites in Pakistan was, for instance, important to ensure popularity.
Various websites could help the company develop different strategies for building their brand. The company must gather a community, and then see if the fan growth graph was showing good results, he added. Jang Group Marketing Director Peter Lucas presented on “Efficacy of Online Advertising”. He said since 1997, the Jang Group had come a long way as its website was among the top ten sites searched by people. Geo TV was also the first to come up with online video streaming (World Cup 2011).
“We had more than 5 million visits for the live streaming,” said Lucas. Lucas pointed out that countries were facing recession and it was one of the main reasons why more and more investment must be made in online advertising. He said compared to TV and print, the fastest growing media was the online media. He said that Pakistan had a lot more room for growth than any other country since advertising online had not yet been explored properly here.
“Why is this growth so rapid in other countries?” he questioned. “Because online advertising was targeted, measurable, cost effective, interactive and the numbers don’t lie. It has immense global reach time and frequency capping.” Since March 2011, there had been about 20,431,000 internet users in Pakistan proliferating every single day. Digital, he said, was the future. Media Mind Online Media Strategist Hassan Khan presented on “Building Brands Through Rich Media” and specified that rich media had an interactive audience, and certain other features such as data capture.
His said people learned only through engaging and repeating. Brands needed time with customers to build brand moments in the competitive atmosphere. Involving people in brand interaction was extremely important, he said adding that a brand must travel to where the targeted market was accumulated. “It should not be expected that the brand page be visited by people themselves. Advertising must be done to attract them. This is incredibly important,” Khan said.
“Though clicks are important as they show how many users came to visit the page, clicks alone can never determine brand’s popularity or strength. It is possible that someone not part of a brand’s target market visits the page. A click will not tell that. What should be measured is the dwell time – how long, in seconds, has the user stayed on the brand’s page.”
Rozee.pk Sales and Marketing Regional Head Muhammad Muaz Bin Shahbaz introduced Digital Environment in Pakistan. Digimark gave a tremendous opportunity of networking, socialising and interaction with e-marketing veterans, entrepreneurs, brand managers, media personal, bloggers and post-graduate students. Approximately 200 participants from national and multinational brands, small and medium enterprises, digital media experts, analysts, print and electronic media professionals and bloggers attended the summit.
The event was sponsored and partnered by various brands including Pakistan Today, Strategic Alliancez, 3WOGLE Group of Companies, Rozee.pk, 7thSENS, JANG Group, PK Economists, FM 89, Wisdom, Confront station, FABI Studios and AVIVONS.