DIGITAL MEDIA

Global social networking advertising specialist Adknowledge is ramping up its presence in Australia, investing locally in resources and launching a new expanded product range. The online media business which is headed up by former MySpace founder Brett Brewer is a one stop shop for social network advertising on applications, delivering impressions on applications across Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and HI5.

According to Adknowledge Australia’s managing director Markus von der Luehe the company is the largest advertising network for social applications, boasting 10 billion impressions per month globally and 1/2 billion per month in Australia.

“We deliver unique users and not cookies across all major social networks because we can cap by encrypted email address. We provide demographic targeting and significant reach and we offer a run of network campaigns, video and sponsorship advertising,” he said.

The company entered the Australian market quietly in November but has been in extensive talks with media buyers and adverting agencies in recent month as it readies for the next phase of its local growth

“16% of Internet time today is spent on social networking. This is a major opportunity for brands to reach their audience. It is early days but we are seeing a lot of interest from our advertisers,” von der Luehe said.

Adknowledge are holding two industry seminars in Sydney and Melbourne at the end of September featuring Brewer and speakers from Nielsen Online and emitch to discuss the future of online advertising.

“A major reason behind the event is that we want to assist with the education of media buyers, especially those who use traditional media. We will facilitate the understanding of advertising on social networks. The exponential growth in social networking is a good opportunity for brands to get the necessary reach and target demographically to their key audience,” he added.

Adknowledge has doubled its staff in the last month and is planning to increase the local team by another 50% in the next 6-8 months. The social advertising product has been the first Adknowledge product to launch into the Australian market but is gearing up for the launch of a suite of products including; behavioural targeting, list management, bidsystem, taglines and search.

von der Luehe attributes the local 1/2 billion per month impression rates to Google’s Open Social platform. “All major social networks have now opened their platform to external developers. This means that developers need to develop a new application only once and can then roll it out across multiple platforms. This has contributed significantly to the massive growth in the market.”

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