In the mysterious world of the Internet, sometimes the most obvious statistics get hidden amongst the plentiful jargon and myriad of metrics.  NBR commentator, Chris Keall, has this week highlighted the phenomenal size of Trade Me’s membership, asserting that the answer to the question: ’How many New Zealanders use Trade Me? is simply ‘All of us’. 

His explanation of how UBs (Unique Browsers) are calculated is pretty accurate.  However the measure still to be cracked is a calculation of how many people either share the same pc/internet connection, or gather around computer screens as the auction nears closing, auto-extends with bids frantically placed by multiple parties and tension rises.   If it was a magazine or newspaper we would calculate this as ‘readership’, but for computers connected to the Internet, we assume one IP address means one computer and one person.

Perhaps counting UBs is a relatively conservative measure of how many unique viewers are spending time on websites such as Trade Me?

The New Zealand online industry is in good heart with all sectors of advertising expenditure recording YoY growth at a combined growth rate of 43%.

Display Advertising was up 38% against full year 2007, 20% up on same quarter 2007, but flat on Q3, as anticipated due to the traditional drop off in the last week of December.  All data courtesy of IAB PwC Insight Report 2007 and 2008. 

Already some trends are becoming evident. Display adspend growth slowed in 2008 compared to the rocket that was 2007 (the first year data on gross adspend received by NZ online publishers was provided to, and audited by, PwC) but continues its annual climb at the expense of other media sectors.

Quarterly analysis is useful for forward planning.  We’re starting to see that Q1 drops on previous quarter, due to light January revenues.  Q2 is the biggest growth quarter (up 30% in ‘08 and 44% in ‘07).  Q3 gives solid growth as new marketing spend is released and wisely chooses online over traditional offline media.  Q4 remains flat on Q3 due to Xmas (odd, given the growth in interactive retail advertising last year) before dropping back in Q1.

In the Oct-Dec quarter of 2008, spend from Government campaigns was up 3% (this growth is unlikely to continue in 2009) and finance sector online advertising were down by a whopping 5.8%, demonstrating the impact of finance companies going broke combined with a reluctance by trading banks to advertise mortgage rates as credit tightened.  The automotive sector drop of almost 1.8% was partly seasonal but also recession-related.

It is expected that the financial sector will bounce back to be the leading industry category in the Jan-Mar first quarter of 2009 due to increased mortgage & card activity, travel will hold up as airlines invest to move national and international seats (along with the national launch of Jetstar), government spend will decline slightly as the keys to the various coffers are progressively locked away and telecommunications sector advertising will remain steady but expect big growth in Q2 due to a lift in mobile spend and continued agressive broadband investment.

A final note, on search.  This online sector progressively declined quarter by quarter from $15.13M in Q1 down to $14.57M in Q4/08.  I wonder if this is why Google is not replacing its New Zealand Country Manager?

The World Push Ups Championships are coming to Wellington on 28th March ‘09.  Check out the current competitors.  

Will you enter?

Graph from ASA 2007 Industry Turnover Statistics.
1.  Any guesses as to which sector will be the biggest growing medium when the adspend figures for 2008 are released?
2.  And what about the percentage growth over 2007?

There’s a fierce battle brewing in the automotive world.  But this time it’s not the war of the wagons or a melee between marques.  It’s much more sinister than that.  In the almighty chase for kiwi eyeballs, there’s a scuffle for second in the chase for automotive website traffic.

A bunch of brands trail Trade Me Motors (460,509 Unique Viewers) by an almighty margin.

Autotrader (30,588 UVs) and Turners (26,458 UVs) for the week to 18th Jan 2009 take 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

Further back in the pack with less than 20,000 unique viewers that week was aa.co.nz/motoring and in fifth position with 18,534 UVs was the NZ Herald motoring section - a paltry 4% of Trade Me Motors traffic.

Page impressions for that same week make interesting reading, with Trade Me Motors serving 50,344,001 pages vs 117,001 pages for the motor part of the NZ Herald, that’s 0.2% of the TM Motors traffic!  Again for comparison over the same period, average session duration for TM Motors was 22.28 minutes vs 2.56 minutes on nzherald.co.nz/motoring.  Ouch.

As the year progresses, expect to see campaigns and announcements from the pack - chasing the scraps of 100,000 odd weekly viewers.  Publishing can be a tough business as AutoTrader discovered last year.

As an aside, a quick delve into the archives reveals the fastest car ever listed on Trade Me Motors was a McLaren F1 and among the top searched terms on Trade Me in 2008 were Skyline, Hilux, Evo and RX7.  Says something about New Zealanders.  Aye, mate.