Online Media of the Year: Search No. 10 BBC

Owned by: British Broadcasting Corporation

CEO: John Smith

Chair: Sir Michael Lyons 

Head of Marketing & Communications, BBC World: Annabel Cameron

Editorial director, BBC World: Sian Kevill

BBC looks set to bring its online stakes up a notch, having received the go-ahead from BBC Trust for its proposed iPlayer on-demand services in April this year. The green-light is a signal of better things to come in the near future.

Upon its launch, the iPlayer will capitalise on the Internet's ability to store information for download at users' own time, offering BBC's audiences another platform from which they can get hold of BBC content seven days after broadcast.   

Currently, bbcworld.com offers the latest world news, business and sports headlines, as well as the channel's editorials highlights. As of March 2007, the website has more than 175,000 hits daily and 525,000 unique users monthly. Over a quarter of its users are based in Asia from which Singapore is one of the top 30 countries that uses bbcworld.com. Bbcworld.com's recent clients include Shangri La Hotels Resorts, Shell, Banyan Tree and Hyatt International Asia-just to name a few.

The website emerged as the number 10^th search site that marketers would advertise with overall, with 0.27% of respondents voting for it as the top three sites they would put their advertising dollar with. Agency-side respondents were more supportive of the website than client-side respondents, with majority of votes cast by agency CEOs, advertising account executives and public relations consultants.

As a search site and a business site, bbcworld.com was markedly more favoured by those with regional responsibilities. The website garnered three and four times more votes from respondents with regional responsibilities than those with local responsibilities in the search site and business site category respectively, with majority of respondents with regional responsibilities ranking bbcworld.com 3^rd in the search site category.