25 million
dollars worth of turnover from online ads in 2010 was really an impressive
figure, if noting that the figures were just 15.5 million in 2009, and eight million dollars
in 2008. However, 25 million dollars proves to make nothing if compared with
the total turnover of one billion dollars of the whole ad industry.

Fledgling and chaotic

A
businessman in HCM City was offered to place a small banner to advertise about
his company on a newspaper introducing itself as having millions of
visitors a day, for which he had to pay 10 million dong a week. However, after
two weeks of placing the banner, only 200 visitors clicked mouse to read the
banner. The businessman later decided to say “no” to online ads.

Banner
are now the most popular type
of online ad on online newspapers in Vietnam, while the type was only used in
other countries 10 years ago. Currently, many other types of online ads have
become more popular, including rich media, search engine, or adword.

Over
the last three years, the Vietnamese marketing community has to learn all the
things that have been developed in the world in the last 10 years, and it still
cannot catch up with the new tendency. Therefore, online ad in Vietnam remains
fledgling and chaotic.

Experts
have pointed out that the number of people who know the art of doing the online
marketing or digital marketing in Vietnam is not high. Most of the service
providers have jumped into the field, though they have not gone long term
training courses. The predictions about the boom of online ad services have led
to the establishment of too many service companies, while the competition among
the companies has made the market more chaotic.

Ad efficiency immeasurable

Most
businessmen admitted that the budgets they reserve for online ads are “modest”.
However, they said that they will try to allocate budgets in the most
reasonable way, depending on what groups of clients they target.

As
such, high technology equipments, electronics or telecom products are believed
to inject more money in online ads, while cooking or fast moving consumer goods
FMCG will still consider online ads “optional”.

Experts
have also pointed out that businesses are not professional in using online ads.
Most of them simply try to place banners on the newspapers with high numbers of
readers, without considering if the products are suitable to the readers’
community of the newspapers. Meanwhile, newspapers still do not know how to use
their advantages in the most effective way. 90 percent of online ads are in the
form of banner and mostly appear on the home pages, while other pages do not
have any ad pieces.

In
the eyes of many businessmen, online newspapers are not the ideal places to
hang banners, because the news on different newspapers are nearly the same.
Some newspapers have been trying to attract more readers by publishing
sensational news about stars’ scandals.

Le
Anh Quan, Deputy General Director of Kinh Do Group, also said that the group’s
budget for media remains low. He said when more consumers access to Internet,
will Kinh Do shift from traditional ad types to online ads.

Masters still can milk

Though
businessmen say they do not spend much money on online ads, experts still
believe that those, who are qualified, still find clients.

According
to Tony Truong, Director of Golden Digital, said that in order advertise
products in the most effective way, enterprises should well understand about
their targeted clients.

For example, when advertising a luxurious product, besides the placing of ad
pieces on the newspapers with high numbers of visitors, so that the products
become well known to everyone, enterprises should think of advertising on less
well known websites.

“A
website may have 7000 visitors only, but the 7000 visitors are worth more than
the other 1 million visitors, because they are the real targets of the
products,” he said.

Source: TBKTSG