Fairfax Media Ltd said its online arm had entered into a joint venture with Melbourne IT Ltd to give small businesses access to online marketing services as an alternative to traditional advertising.
The Advantate joint venture between Fairfax Digital and Melbourne IT - an online service provider - will provide small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) with a single point of access to search engine marketing services from a range of leading providers.
They include Google, Yahoo Search Marketing, Ninemsn and Fairfax Digital networks.
Online advertising in Australia for the 12 months to December 2007 was worth almost $A1.3 billion ($NZ1.61 billion) and grew by 34.5 per cent, according to IAB Australia’s online advertising expenditure report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers in February.
Search marketing and directories advertising experienced more than 56 per cent growth for the same period to $A622 million.
Advantate would focus initially on reselling pay per click (PPC) advertising and would manage these PPC campaigns on behalf of its SME customers, the two companies said.
Fairfax Digital chief executive Jack Matthews said Advantate gave the company a sound commercial opportunity with Melbourne IT to extend its offering into the area of search, a large part of the Australian online landscape.
Melbourne IT chief executive Theo Hnarakis said small business owners had embraced the internet as a key business tool and the number of online marketing options available to them was huge.
“Search engine marketing is a compelling alternative to traditional advertising as businesses can create, track and update their campaigns in real time,” he said.
“We are committed to giving SMEs in Australia and New Zealand an effective means of maximising the value of their internet presence, with a view to ultimately developing Advantate into a global service provider.”
Advantate would provide services to customers of both Melbourne IT and Fairfax Digital as well as operating an outbound call centre for attracting new customers, the companies said.
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