Sensis Advertising on TV in Australia

New Ads on TV which push the Sensis Brand

[Warren]

I was watching TV last night - unusual for me - and I saw the new Sensis ad.

Whilst Sensis is no stranger to advertising on the Australian TV - the Yellow Pages "Not Happy Jan" adverts spring to mind - this is the first time that I can recall that the branding has been Sensis.

Spending some $8Million Aus on TV branding apparently, according to a news.com.au article.

"TELSTRA'S rivals were watching it closely for anti-competitive behaviour as Sensis yesterday launched Sensis 1234, the first of three search services designed to re-engineer Sensis as Australia's one-stop information shop.

Backed by an estimated $8 million television-led advertising campaign launched last night and tagged "All you need to know", the new premium operator-assisted voice service will be accessed when Telstra fixed-line and mobile customers dial 1234."

Full Article at : [news.com.au...]

[anallawalla]

This should do well and seems just a step above the existing mobile directory assistance service.

Somehow I don't know if $A8M worth of TV ads could be recouped in a hurry, but it's all branding, after all.

[merlin78]

Looks like they are just about ready to launch their new search engine as well.....still in beta stage though.
[beta.sensis.com.au...]

[edit_g]

Let's hope they roll it out soon, as people going to Sensis.com at the moment (from the TV ads) are in for a dissapointment...

[Woz]

I managed to catch just the end of the ad the other night and was wondering what it was all about. Until now sensis has not been a public brand.

The offerings of the beta search look promising (apart from not listing me in top positions of course) and would certainly bolster up the Aussie Search market. Looking forward to the launch.

Onya
Woz

[Warren]

Woz

Maybe you should give them a hint about all that SPAM in their index...you now, those damm "Sites Positioned Above Mine" type of sites. ;-)

Warren

[Woz]

Hehe, that would pretty much decimate their database Warren.

I know it is only early days, I do find it dissapointing that although using the "Australia Only" button does change the SERPs, it does not restrict it to only Aussie results. They results still come from all over the globe, so I am not sure what the difference is.

Onya
Woz

[Warren]

I had a look at their Submit a Site option.

It will only accept .com.au domains or sites that are hosted in Australia.

And I am sure this won't be free for too long!

[whats up skip]

I found there search results to be very interesting. Sometimes they looked good with the Australian content up the top. Other times they put the international content first, then some Australian and then more international.

It is also very interesting what it considers to be the most important (highest ranked sites). There seems to be a very strong bias to sites with the key phrase in the domain name.

I don't understand the logic in page it places at the top of the results for a site. For one of our sites it did not pick the home page, nor the theme page (This is the highest in Google), but uses one of the minor pages.

With the advertising money that Telstra is throwing at this project I am worried. Telstra has a history of being a bully in the market place, but this time there is large domestic competition from NineMSN and international competition from Google.

On the positive side, it will be good news if you can actually find stuff in their Yellowpages site though.

[edit_g]

The search results at the moment is just a jumbled mess of old Inktomi - they'll do more stuff/add more stuff/refresh stuff with the results as they go on (I guess).

[dodger]

I like the interface not too rapt in the results - a lot of rubbish in there and the best sites aren't to be seen at all for my usual searches.

[Krapulator]

>>The search results at the moment is just a jumbled mess of old Inktomi

Is that where these results are coming from?

[dodger]

Sensis are hopeless to deal with probably worse then Looksmart was - they'll make it too expensive and throw all the good sites to the bottom so they'll have to pay - I hope it backfires on them.

[edited by: Woz at 2:51 am (utc) on Sep. 30, 2004]

[Woz]

Focusing again on the continual TV adverts, they are still running and in particular touting the effectiveness of their geo-targeting. Given the hoo-ha about their Patent Application [webmasterworld.com], I am asking myself "are the search results are up to scratch and in line with the advertising?" And the answer is "well, sometimes, but generally not."

I am still befuddled as to why so much money is being thrown at promoting an engine still in it's infancy. Anzwers attained far better traffic flow without all the TV hoopla, albeit in a less competative environment.

And certainly the referrals are not there as yet on the few Aussie sites I look after.

Thoughts anyone? Should they be using the Ad money on product improvement?

Onya
Woz

[edit_g]

I am still befuddled as to why so much money is being thrown at promoting an engine still in it's infancy

Sometimes it's more important to be first than to be best. Which they are, in a sense, for a mainstream local Aussie search engine. If this is one of those instances where it's better to be first, I'm not sure...

[whats up skip]

The thing is thought so many people do not understand what the ad(s) are about. They don't realise they are for a search engine.

Remember this is the company that spent millions on the Telstra.com portal brand, only to ditch it later on.

I found their advanced search and geo search very difficult to use.

[dodger]

I am still befuddled as to why so much money is being thrown at promoting an engine still in it's infancy.

They don't know what they're doing, it's that simple, it will fail, no doubt about it.

[Chris_D]

I think that Sensis is actually having a hard time coming to grips with having to 'compete' in the market. After all, their core business experience is being the telephone directory monopoly. So although here are other Telco carriers in the Australian market - Optus, Vodaphone etc - Sensis is still the yellow pages monopoly. Multiple carriers - one book. That's different to the rest of the world.

So search is different for Sensis. Sensis are used to spending heaps on 'panic the customer' advertising: - 'not happy Jan' - 'if you don't advertise in our book, you'll get no phone calls for the next year' advertising.

Being the only yellow pages directory in Australia - small business does get scared of what may happen if they don't advertise - and most just pay up.

Sensis are trying to do the same thing with their search product. But the major difference is - they have competitors (Yahoo Local search/ Google/ Overture); and their competitors have more compelling PPC products, with better systems, and - more importantly - with a larger and more established client and ad syndication base.

I think Sensis have totally underestimated the tecnical aspects of search - and their competitors.

Sensis should have built a 'better' product with the $10 or $12M they are spending advertising their half baked 1234 service.

The fact that Sensis have waited until 2004 to do anything about entering the search market (and then its strategic move was to buy bits of Looksmart..) just shows how strategic and well planned the whole search market strategy really has been for Sensis.........

[dodger]

Like I said - They don't know what they're doing, it's that simple, it will fail, no doubt about it.

[anallawalla]

The only reason why we should care is that these are our tax dollars and for some of us, our Telstra shares.

[dodger]

I wouldn't have Telstra shares, I don't like Telstra at all and I think regardless of how the Govt pushes them the market will make the decision in the end.

Once Howard is no longer around to take the flack for any price fall I think they will go down, his support is keeping them up at present I think.

I'm not good at predicting these things but it's just my two cents worth.

[Woz]

<cough> Let's keep clear of politics please ...

The challenge they are facing is that their results are still not that good (as we all know), although multiple keyword phrases are a bit better. However, they really need to improve the qualty of the organic listings before people will start to take notice, until then PPC is too much an unknown quantity.

Throwing mega TV dollars at it won't fix the problem.

Onya
Woz

PS, I gave that advice to a client recently, and the scary part was that after working together for two years, he finally understood what I said. :)

[Warren]

PS, I gave that advice to a client recently, and the scary part was that after working together for two years, he finally understood what I said.

Careful Woz - keep educating your client like that and soon they won't need you! Got to keep them in the dark just a little bit!

[merlin78]

Hi,

Just curious to know if anyone is getting any decent traffic from Sensis as yet? I have some good rankings and from looking at the quality of results it seems Sensis has improved quite alot (considering the poor quality of their beta results).

So far I haven't experienced much traffic from Sensis and considering the high rankings in the search engine I would have expected more by now. Also anybody else annoyed about their featured listings? They are not very distinguishable from the regular results.

[graeme]

Hi Merlin, I tried about a dozen campaigns for a month or two, with number 1-3 positions, across a whole range of industries, and hardly got any traffic from any of them.

I've closed them down now because the time taken to administer the account simply wasn't worth the traffic.

G