Hi5.com now has about two million members in Thailand aged from 15 to 40. Its biggest age group is 18 to 29 as they account for over 60 percent of the total. It is a new alternative channel for advertisers to reach their target groups at very low costs.
Vice president of ‘Sanook Online’- the most popular website in Thailand, says Thailand's online advertising market is in its infancy but its potential is boundless. He believes that the emerging generation of online advertising professionals needs to have more diverse qualifications than previous generations.
Hi5.com now has about two million members in Thailand aged from 15 to 40. Its biggest age group is 18 to 29 as they account for over 60 percent of the total. It is a new alternative channel for advertisers to reach their target groups at very low costs. "For online advertising today, I think we need to have strong marketing communication skills and be very creative and technology-savvy if we're going to do well in this field. However, Thailand's online advertising market is accounting for just 0.5 to 1 percent of total ad spending," said Sanook Online’s VP.
"In money terms, it's just something like 450 million to 900 million baht a year in a market worth a total of 90 billion baht. While, traditional media, like TV, newspapers, radio, cinemas, etc still dominated. To move online ads forward, we need the clients, ad agencies, media buyers, etc to work together. Multinational companies like Unilever, Pepsi, Sony or Samsung or Intel are all well aware of the benefits and growing strengths of online ads and now aim as much as 50 percent of spending at online customers," he said.
In the world of online ads, the prime space is diagonal, from the screen's top-left corner to the bottom-right corner. Ads in these areas are the most expensive since they attract the most attention from viewers. Besides standard ads, advertisers try to attract viewers by other ad forms that cost less such as viral marketing.
"In the so-called viral marketing campaigns, we engage our targeted audiences by cool activity, such as having a photo contest for a fan club of, for example, users of Toyota Yaris, advertiser may hold a photo or video contest to marry its product's personality with that of prospective customers. So, users may take photos or a short video of themselves with Toyota Yaris, then upload photos onto the Net and show it off to friends, who will then help spread the message. It is the era of digital-brand engagement," said a chief executive of Top Space, an online media agency, representing Hi5, and shopping and e-commerce websites associated with eBay.
"In case of Hi5 which has about two million members in Thailand and has also become a very popular around the world in the last two years with a total worldwide membership of 80 million. Hi5 is a global friendship network of many-to-many since when you have a group of friends, friends of friends can become your new friends, it is like a chain relationship, which can be used by advertisers in the digital era.” "In other words, it's not just the space for ads on the Net but also its coverage and community. In our case, we could cover as many as million of Net-users here. Yet one of our challenges is to create a creative advertising program that effective connects to these million users,” added Top Space’s chief executive.
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