Brands jostle for Net space

Cartier on MySpace? Some would find that a strange twist of strategy, but the international brand wants to  extend its reach to  clientele visiting the social site.

The latest collection Love by Cartier is gracing the outlets of Cartier in Wafi and other high-end malls in Dubai, but it’s also being advertised on the MySpace platform, according to a deal signed by Cartier and the MySpace office in France. The deal will span several countries.

Industry experts believe that the objective of this new strategic turn in the communication has multiple benefits.

It reaches out to the fast-growing customer base of net users and the appeal of doing one buy that can stretch across multiple geographies.

It’s yet another reminder that mainstream Web 2.0 sites have broader audiences than people often assume (last year Neiman Marcus chose YouTube as a place to publicise its 100-year anniversary). It’s also an endorsement of a global ad market.

“There’s this misperception in the market about MySpace being a youth site, a site for teens,” says Travis Katz, Managing Director-International Operations for MySpace. With 40 per cent of all moms in US on MySpace, it’s a very effective route to reach out to them, believe advertisers.

MySpace reaches more people making $100,000-plus than other social-network competitors, such as Facebook and Yahoo 360. Still, a bigger reason brands are feeling more comfortable with MySpace is that the site has created well-lighted areas around video, music, games and celebrity.

Some call it the “portalisation” approach. According to people familiar with advertising on the site, cost-per-thousand viewers, or CPM, for integrated campaigns such as Cartier’s tends to run in the mid-single digits, around $5.

But Katz seems more excited that Cartier’s is a global deal, and that MySpace is figuring out ways to derive revenue from its international traffic – 40 per cent of its audience is outside the US.

“If you’re working with a traditional portal or media company, in each country you have to deal with a separate team, sales force... We can take a global message and localise it for each territory,” he said. This is not MySpace’s first global deal (previous multi-territory deals have included multinational companies such as Sony Ericsson, Intel and Nokia), but it is the most far-reaching, with the campaign spanning eight languages.

Cartier’s MySpace profile has songs from 12 artists, including Lou Reed and Marion Cotillard, that commemorate the collection.

Users can listen to them on MySpace or download them for free at a Cartier mini-site. In the first few days, the profile logged 100,000 views, said MySpace.

Supporters of MySpace claim that even though MySpace is second to Facebook in worldwide unique visitors, MySpace’s visitors are from countries that spend more on online advertisers, thus making MySpace potentially more valuable. Such figures certainly excite MySpace executives.

CPMs are much higher in countries such as the UK and Japan partly because of that currency strength but also because they have strong online ad markets.

But even in markets where CPMs are weaker and fewer dollars are devoted to online interaction, the shift to digital is happening.

For example in Spain, where online ad spending is growing at 35 per cent a year, though it represented just four per cent of total marketing budgets a year ago. MySpace’s strongest international markets include Japan, Australia, France, Germany and Canada.

PricewaterhouseCoopers data estimate that while the US has the largest base, internet ad spending in all other regions is expected to outpace domestic growth over the next five years.

Given the small base of international business relative to domestic business, it’s not surprising that MySpace’s international advertisement growth is outpacing its domestic ad growth.

 

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