Social Network & Media Advertising in Malaysia – How-to & Guide 101
Posted on 10. Nov, 2009 by Franz in Advertising
Social Networking
If you’re a marketer, you’d probably need a lot of numbers to support your ’causes’ and ‘ideas’, especially when it comes to pitches with Chinamen folks. I understand it totally – They want something so tangible that sometimes you’ll need to scratch your head so hard and break some glasses before thinking of a pass-able idea out.
I’m not here to help you on that – Just want to give a proper ‘quantified’ measure of popular social networks.
Statistics: Facebook, Friendster, Myspace, Twitter & Plurk for September 2009
From the chart, you can see that September 2009 carried X unique visitors (not visits) for these mediums:
- Facebook: 124,579,479, Visits/Visitors: 3.69
- Friendster: 1,156,102, Visits/Visitors: 18.38
- Myspace: 50,229,156, Visits/Visitors: 11.2
- Tagged: 3,644,638, Visits/Visitors: 11.27
- Twitter: 23,538,791
- Plurk: 214,551
If you’ve really looked into these social networks long enough, you’ll realize that:
- Facebook targeting is much better for English-speaking audiences, mainly modern & web-savvy users. Main language isn’t Chinese/Malay, and: Sharing percentages and conversion sales rates are lower, clickthrough rates are lower (for regular-sized profiles), and visitors are more likely to spend time on friends and applications rather than screen through every detail of every profile & update.
- Friendster targeting is mainly Chinese-speaking, although there’s also a large number of Malay-speaking audiences there. Clickthrough rates and sales conversions are much higher than Facebook in a few experiments (varies by industries). Friendster doesn’t hold a lot of attention, but definitely hold much better time on site (they are different).
- MySpace is widely known in Malaysia as a ‘music’-induced site. Artists often hang a lot here – And good ones too. MySpace holds a mix of Malay & Chinese (English & Malay-speaking) community, not to mention also Indians. Clickthrough rates are higher for media topics, sharing percentages are generally higher on these subjects. Application use is less than Facebook, but media moguls and easily distracted users are more likely to not goto these sites (more savvy).
- Tagged is the place for you to target more grassroots Malay audiences. Mainly Malay-speaking audiences, Tagged has a very low count active online Malaysian users. They are more likely to share items, and things that strikes them at heart are often everyday end-user stuff like jobs, greetings, friendships, etc. Tagged is also good for targeting Sabah & Sarawak’s grassroot users.
Advertising on Social Networks
Before paying for advertising on social networks, it’s essential to know rules of the advertising game – Different sites are different profiles, different sites bring different demographics, putting up the banner is easy job – getting clicked and converted is a bigger issue and prepare a big budget just in case.
Here are some of the highlights through our experiments:
- Ads on more famous social networks could increase your reach, but decrease visibility due to a long list of factors.
- Social networks generally have higher viewership rates, but lower sales conversions because attention needs to be deviated from actual purpose of using the site.
- Ad intent for FMCG product sales performs much better (and cheaper) in deeper pages. Text could outperform display banners at times.
- Ads could be a nuisance when user experience is interrupted. If you want attention, make a friend or give them some value. (E.G. Games)
- Ads should always tell a story – Not just plain ad-copies. If you plan it well and make it a hybrid campaign, it works much better.
- Ads should always direct a user (to the landing page) and show results immediately. Not drag them long or use promotional talk. (Applies to web savvy audiences & not-interested users).
- Ads that run too long tend to garner less attention. Create a few mini-campaigns and split them into each marketing week.
- Ads don’t work well if there isn’t a connection between tangible value of product vs. ad-copy. Give what you promise them, at least a little first.
- Flashy ads don’t work too well (and for FB, it’s not allowed) on social networking sites for sales conversion. Tell a story instead.
Social Networking - Three different outcomes and examples of ad-serving results on the same product
Usually in a case where your ads are concerned, setting up ONE (1) ad alone for your whole campaign isn’t going to cut it – Or placing it long enough (in traditional marketing theories, brand repetition is advised) on a social network. Modern users today can get bored of things easily – And when they get bored, the eyes tend to ignore a lot of display ads.
Ad-networks vs. Self-hosted
I also want to highlight the importance of understanding the difference between advertisement networks and self-hosted publishers. Before you choose a site to advertise on, you may want to consider a few things first:
- Ad-networks often do this: “You want extra information, please wait for my rep to get to my technical guy, and I’ll get back to you.” Self-publishers often have immediate access. Bad if you’re in a rush/last minute (in which many media companies are always in).
- Ad-networks hold more brands than self-publishers, but does not necessarily mean they are twice as effective – It’s only twice as expensive if you’re not careful.
- Ad-networks often have a lot of unspoken (but clearly written) rules of engagement. This could be daunting for some advertisers. Self-publishers are often more flexible in many ways.
- Ad-networks have a lot of software and trackers that could measure your performance, self-publishers often do not. This is extremely important to measure ROI.
- Ad-networks use more advance targeting technologies like clickstream data, trend checkers or categorization modules. Self-publishers often don’t have expensive equipments like these, but clear understand of their demographics are way better than all of these.
- Ad-networks make a lot of money from syndicating ads from other ad-networks, but self-publishers have their own active, purchasing community. This is more targeted and better if self-publishers are aware of their audience.
Buying an Ad-space
Before you decide on a website to advertise on, make sure:
- The target demographics of the site, and how well your publisher know its audience. {Why?}
- How well the flow of thought is in the publisher’s site. And on which area your ad is portrayed.
- What would you read, feel and click first if you’re the target audience.
- Ask a few friends to ‘test-run’ the site you want to advertise on. This gives you an overview of where your ad should be at.
- How well connected the site is to social networking profiles (E.G. Facebook fans, trackbacks links, Twitter followers, etc.)
- Topic variations on the site – If the site has Alibaba topics (too many very different subjects), then consider a deeper page or forget about that site altogether.
- Measure of post importance through the XML sitemap. (Commonly measured with number of comments, can be turned off)
- Attention paid on each part of the site, and its click-patterns (request this from your publisher)
If you’re unclear and require some guidance on how to improve your advertising spending, you can always tweet me up.
