Online Media of the Year: Biz & Fin No. 7 BBC

Owned by: British Broadcasting Corporation

CEO: John Smith

Chair: Sir Michael Lyons 

Head of Marketing & Communications: Annabel Cameron

Editorial director, BBC World: Sian Kevill

Bbcworld.com fared better as a business site, snagging 7^th placing overall, with the local respondents identifying with it more as a business site than as a search site. As a business site, almost twice the number of respondents from companies of local origin voted for the website as compared to companies of foreign origin while as a search site, bbcworld.com garnered an equal number of votes from respondents from companies of local and foreign origins alike.

In the business and finance category, 17 respondents with regional responsibilities voted for bbcworld.com as compared to four respondents with local responsibilities. Majority of the former respondents ranked bbcworld.com 1^st and 2^nd while majority of latter respondents ranked the website 2^nd and 3^rd, emphasising the website's popularity with those who needed to bring their messages out of Singapore.

Bbcworld.com was more popular with agency side respondents than client-side respondents as a business site, registering three times more votes from agency-side respondents than client-side respondents.  Also, the majority of the former ranked it 2^nd and majority of the latter ranked it 3^rd. Most votes from agency respondents came from folks in account servicing while there was no discernible pattern as to which client-side respondents preferred to advertise with bbcworld.com. By industry, results revealed that bbcworld.com was most popular in the advertising creative agency, financial services, IT and telecommunication, motor vehicle, retail and travel transport sectors.

Although advertising related to on-demand products is fraught with concerns of whether consumers would be able to just ‘fast-forward' past advertisements, it is up to BBC and other companies venturing into the on-demand field to tackle the problem. One such way is to produce quality advertisements that people would want to watch of their own accord - a challenge we think the creative brains in advertising would scarcely shy away from taking up.