For those of you who haven’t read the latest copy of AdMedia yet (you should go and buy a copy :) here’s an article I’ve put together on behalf of the IAB NZ and Adhub.:

There’s been a lot of doom and gloom over the global recession but despite this, digital media businesses are growing … through the roof.

Starbucks’ Facebook profile has 3,847,224 fans. That’s not far off the total population of NZ and certainly the largest chunk of our spending population who’ve visited its pages and refer friends, participate in polls, pass on big ups or the wackness.

Tom Osborne of Wag the Dog believes the fundamental difference to marketing in 2009 has been the shift to conversations supporting placements. “Much of what we’ve done for 2degrees Mobile is dialogue driven – you have to understand and embrace communities,” he says.

According to Osborne, the average kiwi has 120 friends on Facebook so it doesn’t take a lot of referring individuals to create a big impact. “The key learning for us has been to build the community before you try to sell them on your product or service. If you start selling your widget, coupons or polls too early you can miss the bigger upside of a large base of fans.”

“It used to be that a great idea would do the job; nowadays the great idea merely earns you the right to have a conversation. It’s the conversations that drive reach and increase frequency of your message or brand.”

There’s no question that online media has been the winner of the recession, with new shops like Wag the Dog and iProspect popping up within the last six months and large accounts like BNZ and TVNZ jumping ship – in part for perceived benefits to their digital strategies.

The most recent and significant investment from most serious media agencies has been search. All the big shops have search specialists beavering away like counterfeiters printing currency. But it’s not greenbacks they’re concerned with, it’s search terms and consultancy around optimisation for client sites better found by the mighty Google.

“Search is just navigation,” Says Carat’s Ryf Quail, who’s also just joined the search stampede with iProspect. “Those that position search against display and brand advertising are missing the point – search is not an against medium, it’s a leverage medium.”

What’s the biggest shift been this year?

A lot’s changed changed in the last eight months. We’ve been banging the digital drum for some time now but a seismic shift appears to have taken place over this most recent period. Marketers are more engaged than ever before – and with good reason. Starcom’s Alistair Jamison sums up the change:

“I like to look at things simply and I think the best way to think about it is the way people collate media schedules. Go back a couple of years and digital was the last thing on the schedule; it physically was the last line item on the plan!

Now it is second, sometimes even first. It sits at the top of the list. Psychologically it has leapfrogged a collection of other media to become an essential item on any media plan. We all know the drivers – measurement, accountability and ROI etc. The fact is that the shift has happened and it won’t change back.”

Ryf Quail sees it like this: “Clients have been struggling to tip people via awareness any more. Online now has the biggest share of people in the market ready to buy products. The commercial advantage is in being there in all aspects of online media, search, display, social and performance.

“In many categories there’s no leader brand online, so there’s clear space to own that category. But marketers have to be aware it’s the only place a brand can’t control its destiny. It can set the rails and constantly maintain and tweak the tracks to be the destiny, key conversation or key search result for its category.”

What are the opportunities in this market and the differences from overseas?

There’s no question that in some areas NZ is behind other markets with its digital offerings.

In the UK, online has become the single biggest media. Richard Thompson of Total Media was impressed with the share volume of independent media shops in NZ compared to the UK. Eighteen months on there has been a lot more consolidation, with some of the big shops pumping most of the digital media schedules.

“One thing that did surprise me in this market is you were really pushing the brand aspect of online media early on,” Thompson says. “In the UK we started with direct response, grew search, then performance and then brand followed.”

He argues that the risk of dipping into brand in this medium too early is that we miss the mechanics of direct response and the confidence that gives marketers to spend more online. “As total budgets shifted and more appropriate data was reported back, clients became more willing to take creative risks online and young creatives started to view online media as an exciting career path.”

“You have to treat online media as a multi-channelled platform. That way you can carve up budgets more intelligently rather than allocating an arbitrary spend to online as if it were press or TV.”

Thompson is off to Starcom to do just that – working across the Starcom and Zennith teams as digital director.

Alistair Jamison sees the biggest opportunity for Starcom in 2010 is pulling together the vast myriad of digital information and reporting and tangible marketing outcomes. “The key is clearly tying client data and outcomes to digital inputs. Some clients have better data trails than others and the ones with rich data are the ones that best understand the relationships between digital investment and results.”

Ryf Quail: “Clients have been struggling to tip people into market via awareness activity. In most cases online has the biggest share of people in-market ready to buy their products. The commercial advantage is in being there in all aspects of online media, search, display, social and performance. In many categories there’s no leader brand online, so there’s clear space to own that category.”