Vertical channels more effective

A joint study into Hong Kong's digital industry shows advertisers should be wary of declining generalist websites and look to the growing strength of vertical portals.The study, launched by Starcom, Pixel Media and comScore, identified five key areas of optimising digital in the marketing cycle.While the top finding shows digital can be an effective reach builder and drive interaction with other media including TV, it notes a decline in the performance of top websites in Hong Kong.Instead, advertisers should to vertical channels and specific niche publications to complement their reach and effectiveness. This is even more pronounced for a female audience and in the areas of finance, entertainment, education and discussion forums."Know what is the right content area and the right context to fit your brand purpose," the report said. "Hong Kong is an ever evolving digital market, so do not be complacent in your site selection."While the report shows mobile and smartphone usage is very mature in Hong Kong at 220% penetration, the mobile ad industry is still in its infancy.To become a bigger part of media buys, the mobile ad industry needs to overcome some key challenges.Mobile, unlike TV, newspapers, magazines and internet, still lacks a general measurement currency that advertisers can compare such as reach, frequency and GPRs.The report added location based advertising beyond SMS was still a lot of hype, but limited in reality, and unlike in other markets, no one player has solved for it in Hong Kong.