Users might rely less on portals to direct them to the content they're after, but these sites still have the power to attract large audiences that are valuable to advertisers
AOL, MSN, Yahoo - names synonymous with bringing the internet to the masses, connecting and guiding users through the vast and unknown digital territory. Yet such portals have changed, their role as a gateway to the internet becoming all but redundant as users have grown increasingly sophisticated and more confident in navigating on their own, thanks largely to the power of search and the advent of social media.
"We feel the word 'portal' doesn't describe our business any more," says Piers North, head of UK business strategy at Yahoo, which saw unique visitors grow from 25.4m in January last year to 28m in January 2011, according to ComScore. As the user experience has changed, portals are working to reinvent and differentiate themselves.
"While people's use of portals has changed, the sheer volume of users you can reach through them is still high," says Russell Graham, group communications manager at Santander. "If you want to hit a lot of people in a short space of time, then it's a good way to launch a campaign. We'll often do a home-page takeover on Yahoo or MSN, where you're reaching as many as 6m people in one day."
Many brands agree volume is still one of the big draws of the major portals. Emma McLaughlin, customer acquisition and retention manager at John Lewis, says they play a significant role in the retailer's digital marketing mix. "We run takeovers of portals when activity demands instant scale, such as announcements of clearance sales. They continue to perform well on this front." Yet she adds the role of portals is continuously being squeezed by other media, hence the pressure to stay ahead of the game and offer something different.
Learning to focus
"The new thing for portals is that we're no longer trying to be everything to everyone," says Lulu Phongmany, head of business development and marketing at iVillage and formerly of MSN Canada. "That's an adjustment everyone is making. The internet has become so fragmented and users are more sophisticated in how they use it - a mix of search, social and brands they know. So all you really want to be is part of that routine. That's what we aspire to be."
This same realisation has seen the big three portals take a long, hard look at their reason for being. AOL, which faced arguably the biggest struggle since being spun off from Time Warner in 2009, has been the most radical in reinventing itself, making acquisitions (most recently US site The Huffington Post), forging partnerships and appointing new heads of US and Europe, both former Google employees. "Last year was about rebuilding the business and redesigning our strategy to ensure we had a healthy footprint to grow," says Kate Burns, senior VP of AOL Europe, adding that change has undoubtedly been necessary. The company says its unique visitors in the UK grew by more than 13% over the year to November 2010.
MSN relaunched its home page last June, integrating social media feeds, while its goal is for each of its channels to rank highest in terms of reach within each vertical category. Its women's channel, Life & Style, is already the leading UK site for women, while MSN Him, launched in February 2010, was number-one men's lifestyle site for reach in August. "Our aim after that is to become a leading player for engagement, which you can measure by metrics such as visits per user and time spent online," says Matt Ball, editor-in-chief of MSN UK.
Mike Shaw, head of customer research at ComScore, says, "I think the portals that do well will take a pretty ruthless approach and keep the verticals that deliver most strongly, then either partner or close the rest."
Partnerships is one area that Yahoo has embraced to boost its vertical content, last August agreeing a three-year deal with the Premier League for the UK rights to Barclays Premier League highlights. Tim Lawrence, head of digital strategy at MediaCom, says, "MSN and Yahoo both aggregate quite a lot of content but owning Premier League highlights is good for Yahoo because it'll bring in an interesting audience for advertisers."
AOL has also forged partnerships to boost its content, recently recruiting Dannii Minogue as contributing editor to its women's site MyDaily, which launched last September as part of AOL's strategy to become the world's largest provider of premium content. Last month it recruited fashion designer Christopher Kane to produce exclusive content for the site. Burns says the approach is about building content around already engaged audiences, rather than trying to drive audiences to it.
She cites its US site Cambio as an example of how this works. "It's a youth site built around the Jonas Brothers, who have a highly engaged digital audience and very loyal fanbase. So we've appealed to an existing audience with premium, highly engaging content around the band. It's a valuable place for brands to be." AT&T currently sponsors some of the live-chat video content on the site.
This branded experience is a growing opportunity for portals. MSN's Ball says he expects to see a lot more activity in this area. A good example is E-On's recent Energy Fit Street campaign, which saw the energy company produce video content on MSN to educate people about their energy use at home.
Lawrence says MediaCom is looking at the opportunity to co-create content for a number of its advertisers, citing home improvement as an example of a category with potential. "It's a big area that people like to read about and the big brands have relevant information that the portals who are struggling for content can call on," he says.
Santander has seen good results by working closely with portals' editorial teams to achieve synergies between content and advertising. "We're not sponsoring their content but it does work like that if you're clever with where you place your ads," says Graham. "And with some of the portals you get credibility through association. So if they're delivering particularly good content around certain subjects, we kind of hijack that page and almost brand it ourselves."
Portals are becoming more focused on brands' needs. "It's much more collaborative," says iVillage's Phongmany. "Instead of your usual display ad campaign, you'll get better integration, better branded content so it's a better ad experience. Ultimately it's the consumer who benefits."
A good example is AOL's new ad format, Devil, which is due to launch in the UK very soon. ComScore's pre-launch quantitative research claims it increases user engagement by 18% compared to a standard 300x250 ad. The portal's recently acquired rich-media ad platform Pictela is another. "If we're serving consumers with the best, most beautiful content, it only makes sense that we do the same thing for advertisers," says Burns.
Yahoo is also innovating, allowing brands to take over its mail login page. Santander recently promoted its new range of savings products this way. "It's good for impact because users aren't used to seeing it. They go there every day and expect it to look a certain way," says Graham. "It allows us to get attention with a hard-hitting brand message. We've seen good results."
Data leverage
Another area of opportunity allowing portals to play to their strengths, and for brands to benefit, is behavioural targeting. "Because of things like webmail, portals have people surrendering huge amounts of very valuable personal info upfront, allowing substantial targeting opportunities," says ComScore's Shaw.
Microsoft Advertising's behavioural targeting product creates an audience profile from keyword searches on Bing, information people submit for their Windows Live ID profile and their behaviour on MSN. The company recently ran a campaign to drive awareness of a holiday retailer's promotion, combining channel takeovers and behavioural targeting. It delivered 2m page views to the retailer's website and users exposed to the campaign were 21% more likely to purchase overall.
Santander's Graham says, "It's the layering of the behavioural targeting on top of the high-impact big-bang execution that has probably made portals a bit more interesting in recent years."
Portals may have been forced to rethink their place in the world but early evidence suggests they can still offer brands a gateway to opportunity.
Quick facts
* The role of portals has changed as search and social media have transformed the user journey
* Yahoo saw its unique visitors grow from 25.4m in January 2010 to 28m in January 2011
* AOL says its unique visitors in the UK grew by more than 13% between November 2009 and November 2010
* Many brands cite reach as one of portals' key strengths
* Branded content and behavioural targeting are emerging as two big areas of growth for portals
Copyright: Centaur Communications Ltd. and licensors
No comments:
Post a Comment