The FINANCIAL — 61% of Georgian citizens claim to use the internet, according to TV MR GE’s establishment survey, which involved the questioning of more than 12,000 people.
The tail-margin for internet users is 4 years; by that age children already react to different browsers, pages and can use internet services independently. Users of the age bracket 15-34 are the most active, totaling half of the gross amount.
Instagram has launched its Live Function simultaneously with Facebook’s Real-Time ads testing, in order to make advertising even easier. However, only 7% of total spending on advertising goes to internet media in Georgia, according to a report by Transparency International, while the same rate for international advertisements is about 30%. In Europe, online advertising has already surpassed TV. The lack of opportunity for getting demographic statistics while metering the content not only during the decision-making, but in post monitoring too, can be named as one of the reasons for this low percentage.
All sources of advertising have their own particular importance as each of them has their own specific segment of consumers, believes Merab Gotsiridze, Chief Digital Officer at AdvertWise. TV, radio and billboard are no exception. However, Gotsiridze considers online advertising to be the most efficient in terms of expenditure. “It allows one to focus on a target audience.”
“Lots of platforms of internet marketing remember the data of individual users: for example which websites they visit; what their interests are; demography; location, etc. All of this allows the possibility for ads to be shown to exact target audiences. In terms of TV and billboards, you can never exactly determine the age segment of the audience,” said Gotsiridze.
TV MR GE, Nielsen Television Audience Measurement’s official licensee, has launched a platform for internet advertising market evaluation in Georgia. Existence of the platform will expand the internet advertising market, Nino Gogoladze, Managing Director of TV MR GE, told The FINANCIAL.
“An independent research organization must inform content makers and companies about web-pages which have the highest reach, are popular, more effective and where to place ads. At the same time it is crucially important to post monitor your advertisement, in terms of number of reaches, clicks and demographic information about users,” mentioned Gogoladze.
The main mission for the new project is to create absolutely independent information for web-pages, advertising companies, content creators and customers willing to place advertisements on the internet.
Statistics are measured by two main tools, Site Centric and User Centric. While using websites as a measurement method, special meters are installed on the page which provide information to the server. In regard to User Centric, 1,000 users are involved in the research, plug-in is controlling their activities on the internet and also sending it to the server. A final report can be got within 3-5 minutes, which is aggregated from these two sources and no one knows individual results. The service will eliminate the problem of getting demographic statistics, which was mentioned by Transparency International.
In the process of forming a User Centric tool, which will ultimately unite more than 3,000 users, research was conducted in 2015 in cities and villages across Georgia.
The internet is the second main source of news for users in Georgia after television, according to the research of TI. Exactly the same can be proved by TV MR GE’s top 10 Georgian web-pages as of October. Myvideo.ge, Net.adjara.com and Ambebi.ge are the leading pages by reach percentage. They are followed by Amindi.ge, Itermedia.ge, Palitratv.ge and Myauto.ge. The top 10 web-pages include 3 more websites – Newposts.ge, Mymarket.ge and Geo.saitebi.ge.
TI proves that one of the biggest shares of online advertisement goes to Facebook, which actually provides competitive prices and the biggest auditorium for the advertisement. Facebook provides each customer with detailed information about their advertisements, including number of reaches, clicks and demographic details. Despite the fact that additional meters cannot be installed on social networks, Georgian advertisement makers will get information about the percentage of users from a panel who saw their advertisement.
“Google and Facebook are the most-visited websites in Georgia. Accordingly, these are the most efficient sources of advertising. In addition, having ads on local websites frequently visited by Georgians would also be reasonable,” Gotsiridze suggested.
Youtube (87.24%), Facebook (86.34%), Google (81.29%), Odnoklassniki (46.15%) and Instagram (17.91%) are the social media networks with the highest reach in Georgia. That is the reason why companies prefer to place advertisements on social media.
“Over the next five years global growth in the number of people accessing the internet exclusively through mobile devices will grow by more than 25% per year while the amount of time we spend on them continues to grow. This change in the way we access the internet is fueling explosive growth in mobile commerce and mobile advertising,” said Scott Strawn, Programme Director, Strategic Advisory Service.
Because of the increased number of smartphone users, soon TV MR GE will use a special plug-in for mobile phone activity control for panel included users as well.
The total amount of spending on online advertisements as of now in Georgia is about USD 3-3.5 million, which is believed will increase because of a new platform of measurement.
