January 2007
Press Release
Online Predictions For Kiwi Marketers
2006 was an interesting year with the spectacular sale of auction house Trademe.co.nz and the massive uptake of “you & me” media channels like YouTube.com and Myspace.com. So what will 2007 bring? How will this impact on Kiwi marketers –
here are our predictions.
Ferrit will fly like a pig Following substantial ‘reallocation of human resources’ brought on by continued market and
regulatory pressures, Telecom New Zealand will concede that running an eCommerce website (and poorly at that) is not a
core competency and will close Ferrit.co.nz down.
Corporates and their acquisitions struggle to co-exist Auction house TradeMe.co.nz, New Zealand’s second most visited
site, will face a backlash from its user-base as Fairfax meddles with its service offering and revenue model. Either
Zillion.co.nz or a new entrant will experience significant gains as a result – in terms of user numbers, traffic and
revenue – but will not seriously threaten TradeMe’s position… yet.
Yahoo! is rising On the back of Telecom New Zealand’s adoption of Yahoo! over incumbent MSN for its “xtra” portal, we
will see a meteoritic rise in that company’s NZ web presence. Yahoo! currently ranks as the New Zealand’s fifth most
popular site (Alexa.com) and we expect this to move to number three. Question is how will marketers respond?
Kiwis moving to Venice The Venice Project, launching in March, will change broadcast television – content and
advertising – forever. Proportionally speaking, New Zealand will show one of the highest rates of pick-up for this
service.
Consolidation in the SEA / SEO sector As suggested by others (Kevin Ryan – Kineticresults.com), acquisitions in the
search engine agency world will impact New Zealand marketers. Fewer companies will deal with specialist SEA / SEO
agencies (because there will be fewer of them), choosing instead to partner with full-service interactive agencies that
have SEA / SEO as one of many competencies. www.markerstudio.com
ENDS