KEY POINTS:
Electronics retailer Noel Leeming seems to have made a serious error of judgment in using American consumer campaigner Erin Brockovich to front a new TV advertising campaign dubbed "the real deal".
Teasers featuring Brockovich, who is a hero in the US for her environmental campaigning in the 1990s, ran throughout the weekend, so by Sunday night viewers were no doubt intrigued to see what good cause the straight-talking star had lent her name to.
But they may have been let down to discover Brockovich's appearance on New Zealand television was a celebrity endorsement for Noel Leeming.
It's a somewhat puzzling move for Brockovich, who posed for her first ever TV adverts in Los Angeles rather than increasing her carbon footprint by jetting down to Auckland.
But she claims to have done her research on Noel Leeming and found it was a company that "does right" by its customers.
But if the dozens of reader comments on the Herald website are anything to go by, it seems many shoppers' view of the country's largest electronics retailer doesn't quite square with the theme of the advertising.
"Customer service is non-existent," one reader wrote while another described visiting the store as "possibly the worst shopping experience one could have".
Noel Leeming was right in thinking it needed an image overhaul, but to mount a costly media campaign using a well-known consumer advocate, then deliver ads with little substance was a mistake.
Still, the company is gradually going green with recycling and moves to reduce power consumption in stores by 10 per cent. Pity they weren't far enough down the track on this to give Brockovich something sensible to say.
"The reality is transforming a business like this doesn't happen overnight, but we are committed to the journey, and having Erin on board as a focus point is a major step forward," Noel Leeming chief executive Andrew Dutkiewicz wrote in a letter to the Herald.
TV3'S rugby hangover
Poor old TVWorks. Its TV3 coverage of the All Blacks game against France may have pulled in 1.1 million viewers, but the ABs' loss means TV3 has to now "make good", as it's called in the industry. This involves giving out extra advertising spots to make up for the ratings shortfall that resulted from our early exit from the World Cup.
TVWorks is already doing the sums on this, but before the shock loss there were signs the Cup coverage wasn't delivering as strongly for advertisers as expected.
"The All Blacks games have been on par with our projected audiences, however some scheduling [replays/highlights] has not performed to our expectation - resulting in shortfalls for key clients," TVWorks chief executive Brent Impey wrote in a letter to advertisers on October 8, the day after the Cup defeat.
"TVWorks would like to reiterate that we intend to work closely with all pack holders to address any shortfalls and to deliver the guaranteed ratings. Your [account manager] will be in contact with you to discuss a mutually acceptable time frame for compensation," he added.
What's crucial here is the timeframe. If TV3 has to make up the shortfall before the end of the year, it will eat into its valuable advertising space normally reserved for the all-important Christmas selling period.
There'll no doubt be a lot of wrangling by aggrieved advertisers to try to get the best advertising spots possible to try to make up for what was a miserable Rugby World Cup in more ways than one.
Packer on track
Australian media mogul James Packer has finally got court approval to split his company Publishing and Broadcasting Limited into separate media and gambling ventures. It will constitute a complicated de-merger that will also involve up to A$2 billion ($2.4 billion) in cash being given back to shareholders.
There were gasps of shock in the PBL camp when it was suggested that recent tax law changes would have serious implications for the de-merger when it comes to capital gains tax. It was later revealed the changes didn't apply to de-mergers or deals already announced.
Packer has been lobbying hard for shareholders to approve the deal which continues an intense period of industry restructuring after the loosening of Australian media ownership laws.
Packer's share of the cash return is estimated to be around A$785 million.
The new gambling venture, Crown, will expand its casino presence internationally and the de-merged media unit, which includes stakes in Channel Nine, ACP, Seek, Foxtel and Fox Sports, will focus on, you guessed it, new media ventures.
Scoop comes to TV
I've been sampling the offerings of Triangle TV's new Freeview-only digital TV channel Stratos over the last couple of weeks. It's a mixed bag of content at the moment. In one day I watched some interesting Al Jazeera news reports, a DW documentary from Germany on modern art and what appeared to be a promotional video for South Korea.
While there are only a few tidbits on Stratos really worth tuning in for, the channel has huge potential thanks to the reach the satellite-delivered digital TV platform offers. It seems online current affairs agency Scoop.co.nz also sees the potential.
On October 24, Scoop TV is set to debut on Stratos, bringing "New Zealand-made current affairs and documentaries with investigative pieces from both New Zealand and the Pacific region," according to the Stratos website.
Run by experienced hacks Alastair Thompson and Selwyn Manning, Scoop attracts a decent-sized audience of around 450,000 unique visitors a month and is always prominently featured in Google search results.
It's unclear where all the content will come from and what format the show will take, but if Scoop's track record on the web is anything to go by, it will fill a comfortable niche between the mainstream TV news outlets.
Dominating the web
The first set of methodical figures showing the size of our online advertising market has been assembled by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, and shows the market was worth $57.6 million for the first half of the year. Of note also is the high proportion of online classifieds advertising compared to other countries.
Online classifieds, the domain of the mainstream media players who have taken their ad listings online, made up 48 per cent of the market in the first quarter, but had slipped to 44 per cent in the second quarter. Still, that compares to just 27 per cent in Australia, 20.8 per cent in the UK and 17 per cent in the US.
The categories that are really starting to expand here and abroad are display and search-based advertising.
In the latter category, Google is the dominant player.
That's increasingly being seen as a worrisome situation as advertisers look to do more online.
In Australia where around 40 per cent of the A$1 billion internet advertising market is estimated to be spent on paid search ads, nearly 90 per cent of internet searches are undertaken either through google.com.au or google.com.
That means Google gets the lion's share of the audience and therefore the advertising. Yahoo! and MSN barely get a look-in, though they are trying hard to win market share as Google exploits its lead.
John Tawadros, the head of a search engine marketing group which has just opened a regional office in Australia, told the Sydney Morning Herald that Google's monopoly on search advertising allows the internet giant to put its prices up 12 per cent in the third quarter of the year.
