AdWorld Features

A Big Player in the Market

RTÉ has been to the fore in ramping up its online investment over the past two years and is now playing an integral part in helping shore up much needed commercial revenue. Conor Mullen, commercial director of RTÉ Publishing talks to IMJ.

Few media companies in Ireland can match RTÉ when it comes to depth and breadth of its online coverage. Like the highly praised BBC.co.uk website, RTÉ.ie has become a veritable reservoir for a wide range of content from news and current affairs right through to sports, entertainment, business, food, lifestyle, fashion and children's content.

With 2.5m unique users a month, it has now firmly established itself as one of the top consumer websites in Ireland. While there can be a temptation to knock RTÉ in certain media circles, it is difficult to fault the quality and comprehensive nature of its online offering.

While TV and radio account for the lion's share of resources and revenue in Donnybrook, online has become an increasingly important part of the broadcaster's future strategy according to Conor Mullen, commercial director of RTÉ Publishing, the unit within RTÉ which is responsible for online.

"We are always exploring new ways for audiences to access our content. Already we have almost two million page impressions per month on our mobile site ( m.rte.ie) and are heading for one million streams per month on the RTÉ Player . The RTÉ News Now service is also gaining momentum where you can watch RTÉ News bulletins 24 hours a day. This is in line with ensuring that we can reach our audience where ever and whenever they want."

The success of the website, and indeed other comparable websites like independent.ie and irishtimes.com has been driven by what Mullen says is "the insatiable desire for up to date content that has relevance to the audience. And while we are still playing catch-up in terms of broadband penetration, the incredible growth of broadband in the last couple of years has aided in the growth of net usage at home. This in turn has led to an audience that advertisers now wish to really engage with."

From an advertisers perspective RTÉ has been peddling a range of cross-media opportunities, including online, with some considerable success. This strategy has been helped enormously by the arrival of the catch-up RTÉ Player says Mullen."We have been actively engaged with cross media opportunities for a number of years now and are always exploring ways to extend advertisers messages on all platforms. A good example of this is the sponsorship of The Late Late Show across the RTÉ Guide, RTÉ.ie and the RTÉ player," he says.

Other notable successes on this front, according to Mullen, include "Make Me an RTÉ Weather Star which also ran across TV, print and online as well as the recent Spend Clever + Live Better."

Since it was launched earlier this year the RTÉ Player has been a huge success. According to Mullen the number of streams viewed since it went online in April has passed the 3.6m mark. In October alone it hit 955,964 while the number of unique users using it in the same month was an impressive 245,312. The most popular shows being viewed are the usual suspects like The Late Late Show, Private Practice, Grey's Anatomy, the Clinic and Eastenders.

The statistics for the RTÉ.ie site are equally robust. According to Mullen its May ABCe figures came in with 2.58m unique users and 56.99m page impressions. "This shows a year-on-year increase of 22% and 30% respectively," he adds. Of the 2.58m unique users, 1.52m of them are Irish while the balance of 1.06m were classified as overseas viewers.

For planners, media buyers and indeed clients trying to get their heads around meaningful industry accepted measurement tools has been at best tricky. The success and the credibility of the ABCe model in the UK, in particular, was an important factor for the national broadcaster.

"There is a myriad of measurement tools available - the question is agreeing to what one is relevant to the publisher and/or the advertiser. A PPC campaign may work for search - but not for branding - measuring on the last click alone ignores all brand messaging beforehand across all media. As this is still a relatively new medium, new measurements are coming online on a regular basis, for example, RTÉ.ie is the first publisher in Ireland to publish ABCe enhanced certificate. The audited traffic data, which has been carried out for time on the RTÉ.ie site, is aligned with ABCe verified visitor profile information which allows us to deliver a powerful marketing tool that gives greater insight into the users of the site and allows our dedicated sales team to confidently present this trusted data to both existing and future advertisers and clients to help inform planning decisions. But we also work with the likes of Comscore and TGI to deliver an all round view of RTÉ Publishing brands - RTÉ Guide, RTÉ Aertel and RTÉ.ie. It will benefit all the more positive case studies we have to show the power of the media," says Mullen.

While the ability to be able to top into the huge reservoir of content at RTÉ's disposal in an important factor in the site's success to date, the broadcaster is, like most other media companies, eagerly following the debate about pay-walls and charging for certain content. But no decisions have been made, says Mullen.

"The monetization of content is an area that most, if not all media organisations, are constantly reviewing. The subscription model has been predominantly successful to date in a B2B scenario - where organisations pay for content that is relevant to their business. Whilst is widely expected that at some stage certain media organisations will charge for content, it may only be for certain content. Should that occur, we will review the market at that time," he says.