Mandel: Get online

Singapore - Time spent on consuming internet has surpassed TV but yet in markets like Singapore, internet ad spend is less than posters, Yahoo SE Asia, VP and regional MD, Ken Mandel said at yesterday's IDC-Yahoo Online Advertising Summit.

"There's a problem when you look at a market like Singapore, which is certainly one of the more developed markets, and see 2% spend in terms of all the advertising dollars that marketers have. So only 2% is on the internet and when you look at it in dollar terms, the internet is actually way below posters - when's the last time you got ROI from a poster," he said.

The summit, which was attended by senior marketers and advertising professionals, gave Yahoo the chance to promote its latest offerings such as Yahoo Starting Points as well its new sponsored search platform, code named 'Panama', scheduled for release in SE Asia by Q2.

In his presentation, Mandel said amongst the factors stopping marketers from investing more in online campaigns was fear but also, fragmentation of media, metrics and audience attention wasn't helping either.

"We want to create a friction-free marketplace. There's just too much friction right now, it's just too hard, sometimes, to buy digital media. So we're looking at how to make easier to do business with us, but also how to do business with each other. It's not just about the size of the audience, it's about the quality and the fact that they are deeply engaged," he said.

ComScore figures show there are 820 million people on the internet and according to Mandel, 500 million are Yahoo users. He says in SE Asia there are 94 million users and Yahoo SE Asia has 53 million of them every month.