IAB Poland 2008

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT TO

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2009

Strategic report IAB Poland

Internet 2008POLAND • EUROPE • WORLD

August-September 2009 Special supplement to „Media & Marketing Polska” 3

Report prepared by:

Andrzej Garapich, Piotr Kowalczyk, Iwona Połóg, Magdalena Rówińska, Jarosław Sobolewski

Authors:

Karina Adaszak, Adam Chowański, Jacek Chruściany, Krzysztof Dębowski, Piotr Dębski, Łukasz Duda,Marta Dzikiewicz, dr Andrzej Garapich, Paweł Haltof, Jacek Jankowski, Dominik Kaznowski, Xawery Konarski, Daniel Kotyras, Piotr Kowalczyk, Agata Kozak, Adam Kwaśniewski, Beata Mosór, Michał Owczarek, Piotr Panasiuk, Bartosz Piński, Iwona Połóg, Paweł Sala, Iwona Sienicka, Grzegorz Sławatyński, Jarosław Sobolewski, Robert Stalmach, Tomasz Teodorczyk,Teresa Wierzbowska-Smolarek, Mariusz Woźnicki, Borys Wróbel

Editor’s note:

This is the second edition of the most competent and in-depth report describing Polish Internet asa rightfull medium for marketing communication. The most interesting feature of this edition is proba-bly the way Internet has been presented; in the first part we describe it as phenomena (Polish inter-net market) and as marketing communication medium in the second part (Online advertising).

This report is a result of cooperation between our publishing house with IAB Poland. This cooperationincludes several areas: this report, IAB Update meetings, IAB Poland and IAB Europe congresses,pages of “Media & Marketing Polska”. We believe that the data presented in this report will enable ourreaders to familiarize more deeply with the commercial side of Internet, which will translate into realsuccesses in the future.

Juliusz Donajski

Contact IAB Poland:

Związek Pracodawców Branży Internetowej„Interactive Advertising Bureau Polska”ul. Targowa 34, lokal 4303-733 Warszawaphone: 022 698 69 70 fax: 022 698 15 49

WWW:

Iabpolska.plIabpolska.blip.plIabkonferencje.plForumiab.plMixx-awards.plIabupdate.pl

Editor© VFP Communications Sp. z o.o.ul. Wał Miedzeszyński 63003-994 Warszawatel.: 022 514 65 00 faks: 022 740 50 55www.media.com.pl

4 Strategic report IAB Poland

Chapter 1: Polish Internet market

Internet access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

Online consumers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Websites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

Internet communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38

Polish hosting and domain registration market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

Usability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45

Website ratings in Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

Chapter 2: Online advertising

Online advertising expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

Display advertising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55

Video in Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56

Behavioural targeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59

How to measure engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61

SEM – Search Engine Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64

E-mail marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69

Mobile marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72

Advertising in games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75

Word of mouth marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78

Appendix: Internet advertising and law – selected issues . . . . . . . . .80

Chapter 3: Electronic trading

Classifieds and yellow pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82

Auctions and e-commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85

Table of contents:

Internet 2008


Year 2008 has been the best in the historyfor the online advertisement market in Poland.50 percent of Poles are using Internet today.Companies are not able to imagine daily operatingwithout using this medium, and online campaignshave gained significant share in the ads budgets.Experts’ prognoses in our organization have beenconfirmed and the expenses on the interactiveadvertising have exceeded PLN 1 billion. Even moresurprising was maintaining very strong growthdynamics of the Internet ad market that was57 percent year to year; despite of the noticeablesymptoms of economic slow down at the end of theyear. The main advertising segment in the Internetis still graphic advertising. Important positionsoccupy as well: ads in the search engines as well asadvertisements and yellow pages. Also e-mail marketing is still maintaining its importantposition. It is worth noticing that 2008 was a yearof coming out to the broader arena of newsegments. Community services have entered forgood the canon of preferences of Polish Internetusers and have introduced new forms of ads basingon the interaction between them. Majority of thePolish interactive media have introduced offers fortarget and behavioral campaigns trying to followthe trends in the most developed markets. Weshouldn’t forget about the growth of popularity ofqualifying marketing as well as introduction ofwhispering marketing. Incomes earned byinteractive agencies have reached over PLN 100million and the level of completion of nationalcampaigns has been recognized by juries ofinternational contests.

At the end we would like to wish our branch assuccessful years in the future.

Editorial meetingThis report is a sixth yearly summary

of activities in many different dimensions

of Internet market functioning in our country,starting from the information on consumersand following to the legal issues relatingto conducting Internet advertising. This reporthas been prepared by more than 30 authors whohave been supporting everyday activities of IABPoland with their expert knowledge in theworking groups, giving the lectures during theconferences as well as educating young staffsduring the university classes. This year we havelimited number of chapters which was onlyeditorial operation, because finally we haveextended the range of issues presented. Havingin mind the previous year’s interest, this yearfor the second time we are planning to issue thereport in English as well.

IAB Poland 2008 development time

After difficult first year of operating in newformula, 2008 has been the time of strongdevelopment and implementation of plans initiallyoutlined in 2007. Number of organizationmembers has doubled, increasing from 33 to 67.We can definitely say that we accomplishedmuch more than we were assuming. The mostimportant activity for the market was certainlyresearch projects conducted by us, includingIAB AdEx completed together with PwC.

We have successfully completed yearlyresearch for 2007 and summed up the expensesfor the first half of 2008. Our data was includedin the European results of AdEx research.It becomes even more important if we perceiveit as an opportunity to promote our country onthe European arena, when 10-20 percent ofcampaigns are conducted in several countriessimultaneously. We want Poland to join the groupof countries where such campaigns are runregularly.

Dear readers,

Internet 2008

8 Strategic report IAB Polska

Internet 2008

We are satisfied with the popularity ofconferences and meetings organized by ourbureau. We have organized over 20 of them. IAB2008 Forum has been visited by 650 guests, bothPolish as well as foreigners, and 400 people tookpart in the award gala of the Mixx Awards contestfor the best Internet campaigns. We have beendeveloping IAB Update cycles and each of them hasgathered more than 350 participants, and IABShow case – addressed at marketers exclusively,a series of meetings presenting the best nationalcase studies. We have visited Cracow, Wroclawand Tricity presenting the series of IAB Meeting.Within the framework of marketing workgroup inthe search engines and in cooperation with IDGwe have successfully prepared two day conference– SEM 2008. During those events the presenceof clients that rarely visit branch events wasparticularly valuable. We have tried to supportcompanies and organizations which try to organizeindividually or in collaboration local events aiming atintroducing interactive marketing, including amongothers: Media-trendy, Impactors, IDG conferences,E-rewolucja biznesu, Tubes, Netcamps, and ITParty. An interesting opportunity to establish tiesand contacts on the international level was thetrip taken by the group of 70 representatives ofour interactive market to the Interact congressorganized by IAB Europe in Berlin. We paysignificant attention to the process of self-regulation through the documents ofrecommendation, best practices and workstandards prepared in the Workgroups. Thefollowing groups have been conducting their worksin 2008: interactive agencies, best practices indisplay advertising, e-mail marketing, SEM,networks, video and local searching. Unfortunatelynot all the works are continued at the momentand not all of them have reached the assumedgoals. Because of that at the end of the yearcoordinator of workgroups has been employed– Jacek Wownysz who is responsible for activeanimation of those activities.

In 2008 we have encountered for the firsttime the necessity to personally represent theinterests of interactive branch when contactingthe government agencies in relation to the wellknown case of pop up advertising conducted byOffice of Competition and Consumer Protection.We have undertaken the role of mediatorbetween the bodies acting on our market and atthe same time we have cooperated with otherorganizations on the national level. We have beenworking together with SAR and “AdvertisingCouncil” Associations Union, where we haveintroduced two our representatives as judges– Dominik Kaznowski and Olgierd Cygan – whoseat in the adjudication panel of the AdvertisingEthics Committee.

On the international arena we have been actingin cooperation and within the framework of IABEurope. The success of our Polish IAB became anexample for Central and Eastern Europeancountries. IAB Poland has supported developmentof local IAB branches in Hungary and Croatia.Apart from participating in European AdEx,Andrzej Garapich PhD, president of PBI,representing IAB participated in the worldinitiative of MIA Project aiming at creatingmethodology for comparing the ways of measuringthe number of users in individual countries.

Thanks to the large number of usersparticipating in the research, Poland has becomeone of the main most active markets in theresearch.

The success of 2008 activities wassignificantly driven by cooperation with:Grzybowski & Grzybek Law Firm, PRActionscompany as well as Kompan.pl and Opcomcompanies which support development of ourcommunication tools in the network. It isimpossible to name all the persons whocontributed to the development of ourorganization this year. Nevertheless we wouldlike to thank all of them.


Internet 2008: Polish Internet market

World InternetAccording to the InternetWorldStats.com

almost 24 percent of the world population hasbeen using Internet in 2008, which makes italmost 1.6 billion people. The largest number of

internet users live in Asia (over 657 million), andin percentage terms the leader is the NorthAmerica, where almost three quarters ofresidents use the network.

CHAPTER 1

POLISH INTERNET MARKET

Internet access

World Internet users

Region Population Internet Internet Penetration Growth Percentusers users (population 2000-2008 of Internet

in 2000 in 2008 percent) (in %) usersin the world

Africa 975,330,899 4,514,400 54,171,500 5.6 1 100.0 3.4Asia 3,780,819,792 114,304,000 657,170,816 17.4 474.9 41.2Europe 803,903,540 105,096,093 393,373,398 48.9 274.3 24.6Middle East and Central Asia 196,767,614 3,284,800 45,861,346 23.3 1 296.2 2.9North America 337,572,949 108,096,800 251,290,489 74.4 132.5 15.7Latin America 581,249,892 18,068,919 173,619,140 29.9 860.9 10.9Australia and Oceania 34,384,384 7,620,480 20,783,419 60.4 172.7 1.3The world 6,710,029,070 360,985,492 1,596,270,108 23.8 342.2 100.0

Source: InternetWorldStats.com, 2008

Users according to regions

Source: InternetWorldStats – www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm, 2008

Million 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

North America

Europe

Africa

Middle East and Central Asia

Australia and Oceania

Asia

Latin America and Caribbean

657.2

393.4

251.3

173.6

54.2

45.9

20.8

Internet penetration according to regions

Source: InternetWorldStats – www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm, 2008

% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

North America

Europe

Africa

World average

Middle East and Central Asia

Australia and Oceania

Asia

Latin Americaand Caribbean

74.4

60.4

48.9

29.9

23.3

17.4

5.6

23.8



Internet in Europe In Europe almost 400 million people have Internet

connection, which means that nearly every second(48.9 percent) resident of the continent uses thenetwork. The most privileged are residents of Scan-dinavia where the percentage of internet users is

the highest (Island – 90 percent, Norway – 86 per-cent, Finland – 83 percent). In percentage termsthe lowest number of internet users lives in Albania– 16 percent, Moldova – 16.2 percent and Vatican– 16.9 percent.

Country Population Internet Penetration Growth Percentage estimated users (percentage 2000-2008 of Internet users

in 2008 in 2008 of population) (in %) in EuropeAlbania 3,619,778 580,000 16.0 23,100.0 0.1Andorra 82,627 58,900 71.3 1,078.0 0.0Austria 8,205,533 5,601,700 68.3 166.7 1.4Belarus 9,685,768 2,809,800 29.0 1,461.0 0.7Belgium 10,403,951 7,006,400 67.3 250.3 1.8Bosnia and Herzegovina 4,590,310 1,441,000 31.4 20,485.7 0.4Bulgaria 7,262,675 2,368,000 32.6 450.7 0.6Croatia 4,491,543 1,984,800 44.2 892.4 0.5Cyprus 792,604 324,880 41.0 170.7 0.1Czech Republic 10,220,911 4,991,300 48.8 399.1 1.3Denmark 5,484,723 4,408,100 80.4 126.1 1.1Estonia 1,307,605 854,600 65.4 133.1 0.2Finland 5,244,749 4,353,142 83.0 125.9 1.1France 62,150,775 40,858,353 65.7 380.7 10.4Germany 82,369,548 55,221,183 67.0 130.1 14.0Gibraltar 28,002 9,853 35.2 515.8 0.0Greece 10,772,816 4,932,495 46.0 393.2 1.3Hungary 9,930,915 5,215,400 52.5 629.4 1.3Island 304,367 273,930 90.0 63.1 0.1Ireland 4,156,119 2,410,549 58.0 207.5 0.6Italy 58,145,321 28,388,926 48,8 115.1 7.2Kosovo 1,794,984 377,000 21.0 0.0 0.1Latvia 2,245,423 1,324,800 59.0 783.2 0.3Liechtenstein 34,515 23,000 66.6 155.6 0.0Lithuania 3,565,205 2,103,471 59.0 834.9 0.5Luxemburg 486,006 363,900 74.9 263.9 0.1Macedonia 2,061,315 906,979 44.0 2,923.3 0.2Malta 403,532 95,000 23.5 137.5 0.0Moldova 4,324,450 700,000 16.2 2,700.0 0.2Monaco 32,835 20,000 60.9 185.7 0.0Holland 16,645,313 13,791,800 82.9 253.6 3.5Norway 4,644,457 3,993,400 86.0 81.5 1.0Poland 38,500,696 20,020,362 52.0 615.0 5.1Portugal 10,676,910 4,249,200 39.8 70.0 1.1Romania 22,246,862 7,430,000 33.4 828.8 1.9Russia 140,702,094 38,000,000 27.0 1,125.8 9.7San Marino 29,973 15,600 52.0 524.0 0.0Serbia 8,032,338 2,602,478 32.4 550.6 0.7Slovakia 5,455,407 3,018,400 55.3 364.4 0.8Slovenia 2,007,711 1,300,000 64.8 333.3 0.3Spain 40,491,051 28,552,604 70.5 429.9 7.3Sweden 9,045,389 7,295,200 80.7 80.2 1.9Switzerland 7,581,520 5,762,700 76.0 170.0 1.5Turkey 75,793,836 26,500,000 35.0 1,225.0 6.7Ukraine 45,994,287 6,700,000 14.6 3,250.0 1.7Great Britain 60,943,912 43,753,600 71.8 184.1 11.1Vatican 549 93 16.9 0.0 0.0Jointly 803,903,540 393,373,398 48.9 274.3 100.0

Source: InternetWorldStats.com, 2008


Internet 2008: Polish Internet Market

Internet access in PolandInternet range in Poland is still lower than in

Western European countries. Nevertheless,compared to the European Union countries thenumber of Polish Internet users is growing veryquickly. According to the Net Track researchconducted by Millward Brown SMG/KRC companyin December 2008 there were 13,750,500Internet users of 15 years old or older, whichgives us 45.6 percent of population. MegapanelPBI/Gemius research takes into account internetusers of over 7 years old and in December 2008there were 15,523,000 of such users.

Internet access in Poland

Source: Millward Brown SMG/KRC NetTrack, XII 2000-2008, Megapanel PBI/Gemius, XII 2004-2008

Million 5 10 15 20

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2.2 (7.4%)

9

9.6

13.1

14.1

15.5

4.6 (15.2%)

5.8 (19.3%)

6.5 (21.7%)

7.4 (24.5%)

8.4 (28%)

11.7 (38.7%)

12.9 (42.9%)

13.8 (45.6%)

the percentage of Internet users of over 7 years old (Megapanel)

Internet users over 15 years old (NetTrack) information in the brackets – what percentage of population they are

August-September 2009 Special supplement to “Media & Marketing Polska” 17

Internet access

Internet access in the households

According to the European Commission data,48 percent of households in Poland are providedwith Internet access. It ranks Poland eighth fromthe end on the list of 27 countries.

Internet users ageInternet is a medium used by young people.

Age is the most important factor that diversifiesInternet users and people who do not use thenetwork. According to the research instituteGfK Polonia, in the youngest age groups almostevery person is connected to Internet.

Internet access in the households

20 40 60 80 100%

606264

86848484

8280

757271

6962

605959585857

535151

484646

4342

383130

25

Source: European Commission, 2008. Research on age group of 16-74 years old

*Data for 2007

EU 27 countries EU 25 countries EU 15 countries

Holland Island* Norway Sweden

Denmark Luxembourg

Germany Finland

Great Britain Austria France

Belgium* Malta

Slovenia Estonia

Slovakia Ireland*

Latvia Spain

Lithuania Poland

Czech Republic Portugal Cyprus

Italy Hungary*

Greece Romania Bulgaria

Percentage of Internet users in individual age groups in Poland

Source: GfK Polonia Net Index, III 2009, population: Poles 15-75, n=950

% 20 40 60 80 100

15-19

20-24

25-29

30-34

35-39

40-44

45-49

50-54

55-59

60-64

65-69

70-75

96

88

80

72

68

64

48

38

33

22

10

5



Reasons for refraining from using the Internet

During the past two years the dynamics of Internetusers’ growth has slowed down. The reasons that thepeople examined by GUS gave to answer the questionwhy they do not feel the need to get an Internetconnection are very interesting. Year by year thenumber of persons that indicate financial issues isdecreasing. At the end of 2008 only 29 percent ofpeople have indicated that their reasons relate to toohigh costs of equipment, and 26 percent stated thatthe reason is too high access cost. Financial barrier isbecoming less and less important reason, because ofwhich 52 percent of Polish households are still notconnected to the Internet. On the other hand, thenumber of persons that, as an answer to the lack ofInternet connection, state: “I don’t feel the need” isgrowing. It is alarming that 45 percent of Poles openlydeclare that they do not feel the need to get anInternet access.

Reasons for refraining from using the Internet

Source: GUS, 2006, 2007, 2008, research on 16-74 years old *Total number of households without Internet access. More than one

%* 10 20 30 40 50

No need

Too expensive equipment

Too expensive access cost

Lack of skills

Internetconnection

somewhere else

Lack of technical capabilities to connect

to the Internet

Aversion to Internet

Securityreasons

4541

43

2932

36

2631

35

2320

19

888

79

8

533

222

2007 20062008

Internet users educationA factor that diversifies Poles using and not

using Internet is education. According to a veryinteresting research project completed by CBOScentre and research team of Gazeta.pl portal,Internet is used by 85 percent of people withhigher education and only 35 percent of peoplewith vocational education.

Polish Internet users education

Source: „A portrait of Internet user” CBOS and Gazeta.pl, 2008

% 20 40 60 80 100

Incomplete primary

Primary

Middle school

Vocational

Secondary,no A level certificate

Secondary,A level certificate

Secondary vocational,no A level certificate

Secondary vocational,A level certificate

Post-secondary

Higher holding a degreeof engineer, bachelor,registered economist

Higher holding MA or PhD

11

9

93

35

52

73

53

63

69

85

85


Internet access

Broadband connection Although straight majority of Polish Internet

users use the Internet via broadband connection(according to the Net Track research, 90 percentof responders using Internet at home declarehaving always-on Internet access), in terms ofbroadband Poland holds far position behind the

European Union developed countries. In 2008,in relation to the number of connections of over144 Kb/s type bandwidth, Poland has been rankedthe last among 27 EU countries. Poland’sposition has deteriorated; in 2007 our countrywas overtaken by Greece and Romania.

Broadband connection

June 2008 January 2009Population 38,115,000 38,115,000Number of households 13,337,040 13,337,040Number of all broadband 4,878,148 5,534,549Total penetration (in percentage) 12.80 14.50Total penetration in households (in percentage) 36.60 41.50Number of stationary broadband 4,065,118 4,440,774Total penetration – stationary access (in percentage) 10.70 11.70Total penetration in households (in percentage) 30.50 33.30Mobile Internet (number of modems) 733,243 1,064,158Mobile access (in percentage) 1.90 2.80Penetration of number of modems in households (in percentage) 5.50 8.00

Source: Office of Electronic Communication, report „Retail market of broadband access”, VI 2008, I 2009

Broadband connection in European Union

Source: European Commission, 2007, 2008

20072008

21.7

18.2

24.3

20.8

37.4

37.2

35.8

33.1

32.5

28.3 30

.728

.827

.523

.827

.324

.6 26.6

23.9 26

.321

.126

.222

.3 23.6

20.0

20.8

18.4 20

.513

.919

.515

.5 19.1

15.3 18

.816

.8 18.1

15.9

16.3

11.6 16

.112

.7 16.0

11.1 15

.812

.2 15.8

14.8

15.7

11.6

11.2

6.8 10

.76.

6 9.6

6.9 9.

66.

8 9.5

5.7

%

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

EU 2

7 co

untri

es

EU 1

5 co

untri

esDen

mar

k Hol

land

Swed

enFi

nlan

dGre

at B

ritain

Luxe

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Belg

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yFr

ance

Esto

niaAu

stria

Malt

aIre

land

Slov

enia

Spain Italy

Latvi

aLit

huan

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rus

Czech

Rep

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Portu

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Hunga

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Rom

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Slov

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Polan

dBu

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Online consumers

Education and professional statusInternet users in Poland are representing

higher than average social and material status,and most of the time they are well educated.Percentage of persons holding university degreeis much higher than in the population and is18.7 percent. Another 18.8 percent of usershave postsecondary, college or incompleteuniversity education. Moreover significant groupof Internet users is a group of people withsecondary and incomplete secondary education(33.9 percent). Comparing to 2007 there havebeen no changes to the internet userseducation.

If we take a look at the group of adult Internetusers exclusively, the structure of educationis illustrating even more the differences in

relation to the whole population. Among peoplethat are using Internet and are over 18 years old,23 percent declares holding university degree.

Primary education has been indicated only by2 percent of internet users.

Still the largest group of Polish Internet usersincludes pupils and students – 32.6 percent. Theirrange has dropped down by 2 percent pointscompared to 2007. More than 1/3 of users (33.6percent) belong to the group of people running ownbusiness (18.3 percent), specialists or persons withfreelance occupation (8 percent) as well as officeworkers and administration workers (7.3 percent).Unemployed (3.2 percent) and qualified laborers (3.9percent) are the smallest group of Polish Internetusers. Retired and pensioners (4.3 percent) group isslightly exceeding the group that includes seniormanagement (4 percent).

Education of Polish Internet users

Source: Megapanel PBI/Gemius, XII 2008

Primary and incomplete primary

University Middle

VocationalSecondary and incomplete secondary

Postsecondary, college and incomplete secondary

VocatiSecondaryPostsecondary

11.4% 5%

12.2%18.8%

33.9%

18.7%

Education of Polish Internet users of 18+


Primary and incomplete primary

University Middle school

Vocational Secondary and incomplete secondary

Postsecondary, college and incomplete higher

2.4%2.8%

23.2%

15%

33.6%

23%


Online consumers

Nearly 1/3 (31.5 percent) of Polish Internetusers declares no earnings. It coincides with thestructure of professional status of Internetusers, where 32.6 percent of Internet users are

people at school. 30.2 percent of Internet usershave refused to answer the question regardingtheir earnings. Among the people that answeredthat question, the highest percentage (18.7percent) declares income around 1,001-2,000PLN. Among the remaining persons earningincomes, 7.8 percent declares their income tooscillate between 2,001-3,000 PLN, 7.4percent earns up to 1,000 PLN and 4.4percent, according to their declaration, earnover 3,000 PLN.

Among Polish Internet users earning incomes,the highest percentage earns between 1,001--2,000 PLN (48.9 percent). 20,4 percent ofpeople are earning between 2,001-3,000 PLN.The group of people earning up to 1,000 PLNincludes 19.3 percent of Polish users. 11.4percent of people earn over 3,000 PLN monthly.

Professional status of Polish Internet users


Qualified laborer Junior manager

Pupil or student Other

Unemployed

Specialist, freelance

Office, administration worker

Sales or services department employee

Own businessOwner, facility manager, director

Retired or pensioner

32.6%

7.3%6.7%6.1%5.7%

4.3%4%

3.9%3.2%

8%

18.3%

Polish Internet users incomes


No incomeAnswer refused Up to 1000 PLN

From PLN 1,00to 2,000

From PLN 2,001 to 3,000

Over PLN 3,000

31.6%

18.7%7.8%4.4% 7.4%

30.2%

Internet users’ incomes amongpersons declaring income


Up to PLN 1,000 Over PLN 3,000

From PLN 1,001 to 2,000 From PLN 2,001 to 3,000

19.3%

48.9%

20.4%

11.4%



Internet and genderThe number of women among Polish Internet

users is nearly equal to the number of men.Similarly to the situation that happened a yearand two years ago, in 2008 women wereexceeding in the age group of 15-35 years old.Compared to the previous year, in 2008 womento men ratio in the age group of 55+ haschanged. In 2008 women were prevailing in thatgroup (27.2 percent) compared to men(21.1 percent). In the remaining age groups menare more frequent.

Gender has been diversifying the time spenton browsing through the websites representingthe individual subject categories. Men spendalmost twice as much time on browsing throughsport websites, they dedicate more time tobusiness services, news or motorization. Womenin majority spend time in community websitesand, naturally, browse through the servicesdedicated to women.

Age structure of Internet usersThe largest age group of Polish Internet users

includes people between 15-24 years old(30.3 percent). Second largest group are peoplebetween 25-34 years old (24.1 percent).

The lowest percentage (7 percent) is over55 years old. Internet users’ populationaccording to their age has not changed a lot in2008, compared to the previous year.

Polish Internet users age


7-1455+ 15-24

25-3435-4445-54

7%

24.1%

30.3%

11.4%

15.6%

11.6%

Structure of Internet users according to their residence (voivodships)


RemainingPodkarpackie

MałopolskieSilesia

Mazowieckie

WielkopolskieLower SilesiaŁódzkie

PomorskieKujawsko-pomorskie

13.6%

9.9%8.7%

7.6%6.7%5.8%

13.3%

23.4%

5.7%5.2%

Polish Internet users according to their gender (age brackets)


7-14 15-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 pow. 55%

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

7 14 15 25 34 35 4 45 5 pow414 5 245 24 45 34 445 4 545 5 55w

10.2 12

.6

33.3

27.4

13.8

17.3

10.8 12

.3

4.6

9.3

27.2

21.1

MenWomen


Online consumers

Place of residencePolish Internet is still a medium of large

agglomerations and areas of well developedtelecommunication structure. The process ofgeographical diversification of Internet users ismore and more noticeable.

The region with the largest number of internetusers is Mazowieckie voivodship (13.6 percent),next positions are held by the following regions:Silesia (13.3 percent), Małopolska (9.9 percent),Wielkopolska (8.7 percent) and Lower Silesia(7.6 percent).

Despite of definitely better access to theInternet in the biggest cities andagglomerations, the largest number of Internetusers are, irrespective of place of residence,persons living in the villages (27.9 percent) andin the towns of above 500,000 residents(16.1 percent), as well as up to 20,000residents (13.9 percent).

Structure of Internet users according to their residence (town/village)

Source: Megapanel PBI/Gemius XII 2008

Townabove 500,000

Town from 200,000 to 500,000

Village Town up to 20,000

Town from 20,000 to 50,000

Town from 50,000 to 100,000

Town from 100,000 to 200,000

o 500,000

12.3%

16.1%

11.4%

13.3%

27.9%

10.2%8.8%



Activity of Polish Internet users

Apart from the number of Internet users, alsothe time spent in the network by an averageuser is increasing in Poland.

Basing on the data collected during theresearch conducted by Megapanel PBI/Gemiusat the end of 2008, every Polish Internet userspent on average 46 hours and 29 minutesmonthly (December 2008), which indicates thegrowth by 8 hours and 17 minutes, comparedto the previous year. Significant growth has beennoticed in the hits made by one Internet user,from 2,395 in December 2007 to 3,043in December 2008. Every year we can noticea certain regularity in the changes of Internet

users’ activity: the highest growth of hitsand time spent in the network falls down inJanuary, then the activity continues to growslightly and in the second quarter of the year,especially during the holiday time dropssignificantly, to reach the level of the bestmonths of the previous year. In autumn theactivity of average Internet user is increasingagain, reaching the level of the beginning of theyear, and then in December and January it isincreasing even more, reaching new, higher levelof reference for the next year. Despite of thegrowth in number of hits, the average time of

Polish Internet users experience


Over 5 years Up to 6 months From 6 months to 1 year

From 1 to 2 years From 2 to 5 years

33.5%

43%

12.6%

7.0%

3.9%Internet used by men and women

Average time per user (hrs:min:sec)

Period Women MenXII 2006 26:29:42 30:14:44XII 2007 38:12:20 38:11:28XII 2008 46:28:29 46:29:15

Source: Megapanel PBI/Gemius, XII 2006, XII 2007, XII 2008

Average number of hits per user

Period Women MenXII 2006 1585.48 1853.64XII 2007 2380.94 2409.86XII 2008 3046.98 3039.48

Source: Megapanel PBI/Gemius, XII 2006, 2007, 2008

Activity of Polish Internet users (2008)

Month Average number Average time Average time of hits per one user spent by user of hit

January 2823.49 45:32:37 00:00:58February 2757.17 41:30:50 00:00:54March 2987.10 42:35:25 00:00:51April 2888.87 39:35:53 00:00:49May 2759.40 37:44:41 00:00:49June 2642.77 37:14:36 00:00:51July 2525.43 37:02:46 00:00:53August 2696.29 39:30:31 00:00:53September 2641.65 39:14:44 00:00:53October 2834.02 42:08:09 00:00:54November 2915.32 44:20:20 00:00:55December 3043.18 46:28:52 00:00:55



Online consumers

one hit has not dropped down – it is still underone minute.

The group of people experienced in using theInternet is growing.

In 2007, 71 percent of Internet users had beenusing it for more than 2 years; in 2008 thispercentage has grown by 5 percent.

During 2007 the differences in the intensity ofInternet use between men and women have becameeven. This tendency has been maintained during2008. In December 2008, both men and womenhave spent nearly 46.5 hours on the Internet. It hasincreased by over 8.5 hours for both sexes,compared to the previous year. Also the averagenumber of hits for both sexes is leveled and isslightly over 3 thousands.

Growth of activity among Polish Internet userstranslates also into the fact that the Internet is

used more frequently. At the end of 2008 71.3percent people used internet everyday or almosteveryday, which indicates the growth by 4.2 percentcompared to the previous year. 18.6 percent ofusers declare that they use internet few timesa week, and further 6 percent uses the networkonce a week. 4.1 percent connects to the networkfew times a month.

The activity of Internet users is influenced bytheir age. The most active group (counted by thehits generated) includes persons between 15-24years old and 25-34 years old. The least active arepeople between 7-14 years old and over 55 yearsold.

Frequency of Internet using


Few times a week

More or less once a week One or few times a month

Every day or almost every day

6%

71.3%

18.6%

4.1%

Activity of the Internet users according to their age


7-14 15-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 pow. 55%

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

7 15 25 34 35 45 po1414 5 245 24 45 34 5 445 4 5 545 5 w 55w

11.5

8.7

30.1

39.6

24.3

23.8

15.6

14

11.5

9

74.

8

HitsReal users



Websites

In 2008 the leader in terms of range has beenGoogle, visited by nearly 86 percent of PolishInternet users monthly (slightly less in the middleof the year, a little bit more at the end of theyear) – in December 2008 it has translated intoover 13.3 million of users. Consecutive positionsare occupied by two biggest portals: Onet.pl(monthly range of ca. 65 percent, 9.5 millionusers in December) and Wirtualna Polska (ca. 55percent range, 8.6 million users in December).Both portals at the end of the year have notedlower percentage of Internet users in comparisonto the beginning of the year – drop noted in rangeby Onet has reached – 5.9 percentage point andby Wirtualna Polska – 0.8 percentage point(December 2008 compared to December 2007).Nasza-klasa.pl has noted the growth in range by18 percent rising from the 11th position inDecember 2007 to the 4th position a year later.

Over 50 percent range among Internet users hasbeen reached by Allegro.pl auction service (ca.7.8 million of users monthly). Interia portal which in2006 has been visited by almost half of the internetusers at the end of 2008 had 48 percent range.Slightly behind was ranked O2.pl. At the beginning ofthe year Gazeta.pl website was visited by more than6.3 million of users (44 percent range), at the endof the year the number of users exceeded 6.9million, which means that the range reached thelevel of 44.6 percent.

First ten places of websites of the highest rangeat the end of 2008 include also YouTube andWikipedia.

In the first twenty places the highest drop inrange has been noted by Fotka.pl Group, by6.6 percentage point.

According to the number of hits and average timeper user, Nasza-klasa.pl has been definitely theleader of Megapanel in 2008. In December, numberof hits reached 11.8 billion, and average time spentin this website was over 14 hours. Allegro, havinghits number of 4.5 billion, has been placed on thesecond position with a clear gap to Nasza--klasa.Further positions have been taken by Google – 3.7billion hits and Onet – 3.5 billion hits. Last positionin the first ten was taken by Wirtualna Polska having2.3 billion hits. Sixth position is occupied bycommunity service Fotka.pl, which lost the fifthposition. Seventh and eighth position includes twoportals – Interia.pl and O2.pl. Interia has noted dropin number of hits by ca. 650 million, and O2 hasincreased number of hits by 250 million, catching upwith Interia. The leading ten includes alsoYouTube.com and Travian.pl – both below 1 billion hitsmonthly. Two community services have fallen out ofthe first ten positions according to the number ofhits, Epuls.pl and Grono.net.

Top 20 websites according to the number of users

I 2008 II 2008 III 2008 IV 2008 V 2008 VI 2008 VII 2008 VIII 2008 IX 2008 X 2008 XI 2008 XII 2008mln

3

6

9

12

15

Google Onet.pl Wirtualna Polska Nasza-klasa.pl

Allegro.pl Interia.pl O2.pl Gazeta.pl

YouTube.com Wikipedia.org Microsoft Gadu-Gadu Group

MSN Dobreprogramy.pl IDG Group Medousa.pl Group

Mozilla.com Ceneo.pl Fotka.pl Group Gry.pl

Source: Megapanel PBI/Gemius, I-XII



Significant factor influencing the popularity ofwebsites is the time spent on browsing throughthem. In December 2008 the average Internetuser has been spending on average 46.5 hmonthly, which gives us 1.5 h daily.

Internet users in Poland spend the biggestamount of time on Nasza Klasa – 16.65 percent,which has overtaken Google search engine(12.22 percent share in the total time). Thefurther positions are taken by Polish portals,Allegro, YouTube and Fotka. Almost half of thewebsites in the second ten positions are thegame services (Gry.pl, Plemiona.pl, Travian.pl,Wyspagier.pl, Ikariam.pl).

Range of individual instant messengers during2008 has not changed a lot. First threepositions haven’t changed, compared to 2008.First position, according to popularity, has beentaken by Gadu-Gadu, with the range that isslightly lower than in the previous year (37percent), second position is occupied by Skypewith almost 27 percent range and the third isTlen with noticeable gap to overcome to reachthe first two, having over 4 percent range.Fourth and fifth positions have been swappedbetween MSN messenger (2.89 percent range)

Websites according to monthly hits

Item Name Number of hits Average time Site-centric auditper user

1. Nasza-klasa.pl 11,846,191,298 14:05:49 yes2. Allegro.pl 4,476,196,601 04:57:463. Google 3,668,185,303 06:31:244. Onet.pl 3,546,795,711 06:25:39 yes5. Wirtualna Polska 2,264,811,029 05:02:48 yes6. Grupa Fotka.pl 1,588,348,837 04:11:317. Interia.pl 1,176,891,256 03:33:27 yes8. O2.pl 1,172,830,343 04:06:17 yes9. YouTube.com 969,906,608 04:10:31

10. Travian.pl 894,978,743 03:51:59


Websites according to time

Item Name Time (hrs) Average time Site-centric auditper user

1. Nasza-klasa.pl 118,565,909.10 14:05:49 yes2. Google 87,042,760.63 06:31:243. Onet.pl 61,324,395.89 06:25:39 yes4. Wirtualna Polska 43,254,899.30 05:02:48 yes5. Allegro.pl 40,241,911.05 04:57:466. O2.pl 30,398,220.14 04:06:17 yes7. YouTube.com 28,852,234.37 04:10:318. Interia.pl 26,674,722.68 03:33:27 yes9. Grupa Fotka.pl 13,910,930.64 04:11:31

10. Gazeta.pl 12,430,351.91 01:47:40 yes11. Gry.pl 11,147,079.68 03:36:1112. Plemiona.pl 7,537,188.56 08:11:1113. Travian.pl 6,614,837.90 03:51:5914. Wyspagier.pl 6,260,302.31 03:35:2415. Grono.net 5,300,965.20 06:53:03 yes16 Wikipedia.org 4,742,058.29 00:46:53

17. OtoMoto 4,562,043.81 01:41:5518. Ikariam.pl 3,536,641.30 07:39:1219. MSN 3,332,336.61 01:06:0920. Bearshare.com 3,260,762.63 02:36:36


Instant messengers according to range

Item Name Range Real Site-centric(in %) users audyt

1. Gadu-Gadu 37.22 5,778,532 yes2. Skype 26.68 4,142,3663. Tlen.pl 4.15 644,327 yes4. MSN Messenger 2.89 449,1205. AQQ 0.42 65,864 yes6. Spik 0.19 29,513 yes7. Konnekt 0.16 24,4228. Xfire 0.15 23,1719. GoogleTalk 0.14 21,929

10. ICQ 0.12 18,530


Websites ranking according to websites monthly

Item Name Range (in %) Users Site-centric audit

1. Google 85.96 13,343,4982. Onet.pl 61.46 9,541,016 yes3. Wirtualna Polska 55.21 8,571,114 yes4. Nasza-klasa.pl 54.18 8,410,738 yes5. Allegro.pl 52.24 8,108,9616. Interia.pl 48.30 7,497,929 yes7. O2.pl 47.71 7,405,572 yes8. Gazeta.pl 44.62 6,926,703 yes9. YouTube.com 44.51 6,910,240

10. Wikipedia.org 39.09 6,068,85811. Microsoft 32.22 5,002,31712. Grupa Gadu-Gadu 27.28 4,235,243 yes13. Mozilla.com 25.32 3,930,43714. Ceneo.pl 22.29 3,460,822 yes15. Grupa Fotka.pl 21.38 3,318,46216. Gry.pl 19.93 3,093,77817. MSN 19.47 3,022,72518. Dobreprogramy.pl 19.45 3,019,759 yes19. Grupa IDG 19.39 3,010,576 yes20. Grupa Medousa.pl 18.92 2,936,782

Source: Megapanel PBI/Gemius, XII 2008 r.


Websites

and AQQ (0.42 percent range). Sixth andseventh – also without any changes, comparedto 2007 – is occupied by Spik and Konekt IM. ICQhas dropped down from eighth to tenth position.Now the eighth is Xfire instant messenger aheadof Google Talk (ninth position).

In the Megapanel PBI/Gemius research thereare 13 subject categories, to which individualweb pages are classified to. The following arethose categories:

– News, commentary, media;– Culture and entertainment;– Motorization;– Business, finance, law;– Construction industry and real estate;– Education;– Sport;– Lifestyle;– Travel;– Modern technologies;– Jobs;– Communities;– Maps and location finders.

Share in total time spent on the Internet

Nasza-klasa.pl

Google

Onet.pl

Wirtualna Polska

Allegro.pl

O2.pl

YouTube.com

Interia.pl

Grupa Fotka.pl

Gazeta.pl

Gry.pl

Plemiona.pl

Travian.pl

Wyspagier.pl

Grono.net

Wikipedia.org

OtoMoto

Ikariam.pl

MSN

Bearshare.com

% 5 10 15 20%

16.6

12.2

8.6

6.1

5.6

4.3

4.1

3.7

2.0

1.7

1.6

1.1

0.9

0.9

0.7

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.5

0.5

Source: Megapanel PBI/Gemius, XII 2008.



Internet users are mostly interested in theCulture and entertainment category. Everymonth those pages are visited by ca. 90 percentof users. The biggest range (nearly 98 percent)was noted in this category at the beginning of2008. About 80 percent of Internet users visitusually sites representing Communities andNews, commentary and media category. Average

range, reaching ca. 70 percent range, belongsto Modern technologies and Lifestyle, and ca.60 percent to Education and Business, finances,law. 40-50 percent of Internet users visit Sport,Motorization and Travel pages. The last twocategories Jobs and Construction industry andreal estate have the range of below 30 percent.

Subject categories according to the range

Source: Megapanel PBI/Gemius, I-XII 2008

%I 2008 II 2008 III 2008 IV 2008 V 2008 VI 2008 VII 2008 VIII 2008 IX 2008 X 2008 XI 2008 XII 2008

40

60

80

100

Culture and entertainment

Communities Modern technologies

News, commentary, media

Lifestyle Education Business, finances, law

Sport

Motorization

Jobs

Maps and location finders

Tourism Construction industry and real estate


Websites

The leader of theCulture andentertainmentcategory is YouTube,reaching 45 percentof users. Secondposition has beentaken by O2 service,which is now equal toOnet. In December,both services havenoted the range ofslightly over 32percent. Forth wasWirtualna Polska,having 27 percentrange and fifth isGry.pl service.

Communities’category’s leader isNasza-klasa.pl. Thisservice is visited byevery second user, ormore. The growingtrend continues,although it is not asspectacular as in theprevious year. Theremaining services inthis category maintainthe level of below30 percent. The rangeof the wholeCommunities categoryhas dropped downfrom over 86 percentat the beginning of theyear to 79 percentin December 2008.

Culture and entertainment category according to the range

YouTube.com O2.pl – entertainment services Onet.pl – entertainment services

Wirtualna Polska – culture and entertainment Gry.pl

%

20

30

40

50

I 2008 II 2008 III 2008 IV 2008 V 2008 VI 2008 VII 2008 VIII 2008 IX 2008 X 2008 XI 2008 XII 2008


Communities category according to the range

Nasza-klasa.pl Gazeta.pl – communities Onet.pl – communities

Wirtualna Polska – communities Gadu-Gadu Group – community services

%

10

20

30

40

50

60





The whole categoryof Modern technologiesnotes range on thelevel of 70 percentevery month. Withina year IDG publishingcompany has lost theleading position andcame to the thirdposition with18 percent range.Interia was placed inthe first position withthe range of nearly21 percent, overtakingDobreprogramy.pl(second position inDecember), whichnoted the highestgrowth within the year.

First position in thecategory News,commentary and mediahas been taken byOnet, which has noteda drop during the year(by ca. few percentagepoints), and inDecember its rangewas over 28 percent.Second position hasbeen taken byWirtualna Polska,having the range of24 percent. Third oneis Gazeta.pl with rangeof nearly 20 percent.Further positionbelongs to Interia– range of almost17 percent. Last, fifthis TVN24.pl, whichrange has grown bynearly 7 percentagepoints.

Modern Technologies subject category according to the range

Interia.pl – modern technologies Dobreprogramy.pl IDG – modern technologies

Instalki.pl Wirtualna Polska – modern technologies

%

10

15

20

25


ource: Megapanel PBI/Gemius, I-XII 2008

News, commentary, media category according to the range

Onet.pl – news Wirtualna Polska – news

Gazeta.pl – news

Interia.pl – news Stations TVN – TVN24.pl

%

5

10

15

20

25

30

35




Websites

Lifestyle categorytook the fifth position inthe ranking of 2008,while a year ago it wasthird. Websites in thiscategory have beenvisited by nearly70 percent of PolishInternet users. Firsttwo positionsinterchangeably duringthe year were occupiedby Onet and O2, and inDecember 2008 theyhave leveled theirranges to the level of23 percent. Third onewas Wirtualna Polska.Fourth and fifth wereGazeta and Interia.

Education categoryhas overtakenBusiness, financesand law. During theschool year, thenumber of visits toeducation services isbalanced andcontinues to bearound 57 percent.During holiday timethere is a drop downby several percentagepoints. The firstposition has beentaken by Wikipediawith 40 percentrange, further areOnet and Sciaga.pl(with more than20 percentage pointsof gap to the leader),which have leveledtheir range inDecember 2008 to15 percent. Duringthe holiday timea significant gapbetween those two

Lifestyle subject category according to the range

O2.pl – lifestyle Onet.pl – lifestyle Wirtualna Polska – lifestyle

Gazeta.pl – lifestyle Interia.pl – lifestyle

%

15

20

25

30


Source Megapanel PBI/Gemius, I-XII 2008

Education subject category according to the range

Wikipedia.org Onet.pl – education services Sciaga.pl

Bryk.pl Wikimedia.org

%

10

20

30

40

50



websites is noticeable– Onet is rankedhigher by nearly10 percentage points.Fourth and fifth areBryk.pl andWikimedia.pl.



Business, financesand law category hasbeen visited by morethan half of PolishInternet users(December 2008– 51 percent). Firstposition is stilloccupied by Onet.pl,having 15 percentrange. Second isMoney.pl (nearly12 percent range).Third and fourth areWirtualna Polska andfinancial service ofBankier.pl. Fifth isInfor.pl.

Clearly, in thiscategory the sportevents that took placein 2008 had influencedthat category. Duringthe months of Eurochampionships andolympic games, wecould notice thegrowth. First threepositions belong to theportals. First is Onetwith 17 percent range,second Wirtualna Polska(13 percent) and thirdInteria (7 percent).Fourth and fifth areSFD.pl and Gazeta.pl,having the range of6 percent.

Business, finances, law subject category according to the range

Onet.pl – business services Money.pl – business services

Wirtualna Polska – business services

Bankier.pl – business services Infor.pl

%

5

10

15

20



Sport subject category according to the range

Onet.pl – sport Wirtualna Polska – sport

Interia.pl – sport

Sfd.pl Gazeta.pl – sport

%

5

10

15

20

25

30




Websites

Motorizationservices have beenvisited in December2008 by 42 percentof Polish Internetusers. The leader isOtoMoto.pl, which in2008 had over17 percent range.Further positionshave been taken bywebsites that had ca.6 percentage pointsof gap to the firstposition. Second wasOnet with 11 percentrange, third Interia.Gratka.pl Group andGazeta.pl have gotequal range of5 percent.

Created in 2008,new subject categoryspreads its range toover 35 percent ofPolish Internet users.First position has beenoccupied by Googlemaps, which notedthe growth by15 percentage pointsin July. Second is Onetwith its Zumilocalization finder. Boththose services areleading and the gapbetween them and therest of the services issignificant. Szukacz.plcomes in third position,PF.pl fourth andTargeo.pl fifth.

Motorization subject category according to the range

OtoMoto Onet.pl – motorization services

Interia.pl – motorization services

Grupa Gratka – motorization services Gazeta.pl – motorization services

%

5

10

15

20

25



Maps and location finders subject category according to the range

Google – maps Onet.pl – localization finder Zumi.pl

Szukacz.pl – maps

Pf.pl-mapa.pf.pl Targeo.pl

%

5

10

15

20

25





Number of visits tothis category is grow-ing seasonally. Duringholidays the range in-creases from 37 per-cent to 47 percent.First position has beentaken by Onet, having14 percent range inJuly 2008. The remain-ing websites do not ex-ceed 10 percent range.Second is WirtualnaPolska (5 percent),third Eholiday.pl Group(3 percent). Successivepositions have been oc-cupied by Interia(fourth) and Travel-planet.pl Group (fifth).

Construction andproperties categoryhas exchanged the po-sitions with Job cate-gory. This might be re-lated to the economiccrisis – in 2008 the in-ternet users have beenlooking for job offersmore often than prop-erty offers. First posi-tion has been taken byGazeta.pl with nearly7 percent range. Seondis Murator Group,which has overtakenGazeta.pl, in Novemberand in December theyhad equal ranges. Thefollowing is an analogi-cal situation: OtoDomlevels with Gratka.plGroup in December,reaching nearly 3 per-cent range. Fifth in thissubject category isMeble.pl Group.

Travel subject category according to the range

Onet.pl – travel services Wirtualna Polska – travel services

Grupa Eholiday.pl

Interia.pl – travel services Grupa Travelplanet.pl SA

%

3

6

9

12

15



Construction industry and real estate subject category according to the range

Gazeta.pl – construction industryand real estate

Murator Group– construction industry and real estate

OtoDom

Gratka-gratka.pl-gratka.pl/dom Group Meble.pl Group– construction industry

%

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8




Websites

A leader inthis case is Pracuj.pl,second positionhas been taken byGazeta.pl, which wasvisited by 10 percentof users in the middleof the year (this portalwas a leader in thiscategory at thattime). Further posi-tions have been takenby Wirtualna Polska(third), Infopraca.plservice (fourth) andMoney.pl (fifth).

Job subject category according to the range

Pracuj.pl – jobs Gazeta.pl – jobs Wirtualna Polska – jobs

Infopraca.pl Money.pl – jobs

%

3

6

9

12

15





Internet communities

Community services are no doubt one of themost visible development directions of Internetin the recent years. The reasons for that areseveral. We have to remember that the networkitself has not changed. New functionalitysolutions and modern technologies constantlyarise that enhance the capabilities of WebPagescreators. More and more frequently, especially incase of more advanced community services, wedo not deal with static WWW but withapplications and websites using advancedtechnologies. Apart from the technical aspectsthat influence the community development wehave to mention first and foremost personsusing them to broadly understoodcommunication. Polish commercial Internetis more than 10 years old, and therefore– network users are generally not newcomers.

Internet users become more experienced– quickly get bored of currently used solutions.As a natural consequence new, more advancedways of using the network are searched.Significant factor allowing to understand thephenomena of network communities isprogressing segmentation of services offered inthe network. Current community services aredirected at different consumer groups, startingfrom youngsters (e.g. ePuls, PoSzkole.pl),professionals (e.g. GoldenLine.pl, LinkedIn.com),local communities (e.g. Wrocek.pl), up to personslooking for tools to start and keep in contactwith family, friends and colleges such as Nasza--klasa.pl, Fotka.pl, Grono.net, MySpace.com,Facebook.com). It is the need to continue thefriendship that is indicated as a reason toopen and keep an account in community service

Monthly range of chosen services

Nasza Klasa Fotka Moja Generacja GG GronoAjo Epuls GoldenLine Mixer

%

10

20

30

40

50

60

I 200

8II

2008

III 2

008

IV 2

008

V 20

08VI

200

8VI

I 200

8VI

II 20

08IX

200

8X

2008

XI 2

008

XII 2

008

I 200

7II

2007

III 2

007

IV 2

007

V 20

07VI

200

7VI

I 200

7VI

II 20

07IX

200

7X

2007

XI 2

007

XII 2

007

IX 2

006

X 20

06XI

200

6XI

I 200

6

Source: Megapanel PBI/Gemius, IX 2006 – XII 2008

8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 87 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 766 6 6 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 766 6 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 76 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 88 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 88 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8


Internet communities

– 57 percent of users declare the above (D-LinkTechnology Trend, May 2008).

Similarly import reason is curiosity (52 percent).Moreover the key motivations include: intention tokill the time (26 percent), starting new friendships(25 percent), and willingness to discuss interestingsubjects (18 percent).

Although Internet communities are currentlyassociated with services that represent thetype of social networking, to the websitecategory that gathers real communities (socialmedia) we have to include also: blogs (e.g.:Blox.pl, Blog. Onet.pl, Photo blog.pl,Wordpress.com, Blogger.com), microblogs(e.g.: Blip.pl, Flaker.pl, Twitter.com), Internetforums (e.g. Forum.gazeta.pl), websitesdedicated to sharing videos or photos (e.g.YouTube.com, Flickr.com), civil journalismwebsites (e.g.: iThink.pl, Wiadomosci24.pl,Interia 360.pl), community recommendations(e.g.: Wykop.pl, Elefanta.pl, Digg.com) orcommunity knowledge bases (e.g. Wikipedia.pl).

Growing popularity of community servicesresults in the fact that they are highlyrecognizable brands for the average consumers.Brands of such services as Nasza-klasa.pl,Fotka.pl or Grono.net are widely recognized byInternet users – the spontaneous awareness ofthose portals is 90 percent, 48 percent and26 percent respectively (GUS, Millward BrownSMG/KRC, D-LinkTechnology Trend, May 2008).However we have to remember that highrecognizability of the most popular services is aresult of their universal character. Communityplatforms addressed at particular groups ofconsumers (youngsters, business) reachsimilarly high indicators within their destinationgroups.

Large selection and growing popularity ofInternet communities result in the fact thatindividual services representing this type differsignificantly. Usualy it is reflected in thedemographic structure of users. Almost allPolish community services maintain similar, closeto average, gender structure, although servicesthat are the most dominated by women are:Grono.net (61 percent of users are women)and GoldenLine.pl (56 percent). Much moresignificant differences in users’ profiles relate tothe age structure. According to the Megapanel

PBI/Gemius research conducted in November2008, definitely the “youngest” communities areFotka.pl (70 percent of users are below 24 yearsold), ePuls.pl (69 percent) and Grono.net(63 percent). Older consumers prefer Profeo.pl(71 percent of users are over 25 years old),GoldenLine.pl (66 percent) and LinkedIn.com(61 percent). Similar relations can be found alsoin other variables, for instance in educationstructure of users of individual websites.Websites dominated by younger Internet usershave high share of persons that have notgraduated from secondary school, and on theother hand – services addressed at managersand persons already working have over averageshare in consumers’ groups with highereducation.

Describing the so called Internetcommunities, we have to bear in mind the fact,that because of the established name of thistype of websites, it is commonly believed thatthe users of such websites meet only in thevirtual reality. While in reality Internet profilesare used to maintain the communicationbetween persons that know each other very well– most frequently they are family members,friends and colleagues. Hence, users ofcommunity services are deeply engaged andinvolved. Main variables indicating theoveractivity of Internet users towards thewebsites representing traditional character are– higher number of hits and longer time spent onbrowsing through the site. Usually the onlineusers do not limit to using only one communityservice. Constant pattern among personsprofessionally active is having at least twoaccounts used for professional and private aims.

Users using these new tools do not limitthemselves to opening the profiles. Currentlyonline communities are used for bothmultidirectional communication that usesmechanisms offered by website developers, aswell as applications not connected with theservice itself, for instance widgets. Generalcharacteristic of community trend in thenetwork is considerable segmentation of toolsand ways of communicating with people. Thefollowing are in use: mail systems inside thecommunity platforms, mechanisms ofnotifications and statuses, opportunity to



personalize the profile site and its individualelements, exchanging photographs andcommenting, instant messengers and chatrooms, friends’ groups or blogs on profiles.

Using individual website functionalitiesdepends, to a large extent, on the degree ofInternet training of individual users and asa result the knowledge and approval of particulartools. The variables described above such asgender, age or education, together with aninternaut’s experience, make up a significantelement in comprehending his behavior andattitude. Among other things, this is whya distinct segmentation of social websites userson the basis of their activity in the Web takesplace. According to the Never Ending Friendingsurvey carried out by TNS in cooperation withMySpace and Isobar & Carat, those internautsusing social network services can be divided into6 basic segments:� The pros – they are experienced and demanding

users of social network services over theInternet, characterized by the high level ofcommitment and activity while their profilesform a significant part of their private lives.They make up 20 percent of all users.

� The connectors – they have used socialnetwork services for a relatively short timeand are closely bound together with theirfriends, they rely, more often than othersegments, on their opinion but present theirpoint of view just as eagerly. They make up 18percent of all users.

� The see and be seen – they use social networkservices mainly for self-presentation, they arefamiliar with social mechanisms and tools. It isa group comprising 14 percent of all users.

� The explorers – they have used social networkservices for a relatively short time – the vastmajority for less than 1 year. Their profiles arenatural part of their lives. They make upapproximately 25 percent of all users.

� The rookies – they have just begun using socialnetwork services and are usually reluctant tomake virtual friends – they prefer toconcentrate on keeping in touch with acurrent group of friends. This group makes up25 percent of all users.

� The spectators – they are passive users whohave logged in but not filled their availablespace with photos or comments.

Small emotional attachment

High range of SN activity

The spectators

The see and be seen

Connectors

The rookies

The explorers

The pros

Low range of SN activity

Big emotional attachment

Rising cadence of SN using


Polish hosting and domain registration market

Polish hosting and domainregistration market

The market of hosting services and domainregistration has been analysed in an IAB Polskareport for the first time. In connection with thisset of market related data from 2008, itsgeneral picture will be sketched.

Domain registration in PolandOn the Polish market, registration of

practically all domain types is possible, rangingfrom global domains (e.g.: .com, .net, .info)through national domains (e.g.: .pl for Poland, .defor Germany, .fr for France) to regional andfunctional domains in the .pl domain (e.g. waw.pl,krakow.pl, com.pl, net.pl). From 1990 it has beenNASK, namely the Scientific Academic ComputerNetwork, which has been running the nationalregistry of Internet names. Being the .pl domainoperator, NASK allows the final clients(companies, institutions, private persons)to register Polish domains for a one yearsubscription period by the agency of a partnernetwork, i.e. the domain registrars. The Polishdomain registrars, such as nazwa.pl, home.pl oraz.pl, also participate in the registration of otherdomain types. For instance, as regards European.eu domains, they are registered for their finalclients by EURiD, the European Registry ofInternet Domain Names.

Domains can be registered in the primarymarket, hence directly by NASK or by the agencyof domain registries, for instance Nazwa.pl,Home.pl, Az.pl. Domain purchasing can also takeplace in the secondary market, namely throughdirectly repurchasing a service from a currentsubscriber, by getting in touch with him inperson or using auction services like Sedo.plor Allegro.pl. It is also possible to buy domainoptions or a domain itself in a domaindropcatching service.

Primary marketIn the Polish market only precise statistical

data regarding the Polish domain registration areknown. In the case of other domain types (global,European), only a general number of registrationsmade (for global domains this number isimprecise) is known while the remaining data (e.g.concerning the registration of particular domaintypes by a given service provider) are estimated.This is why the statistical data given below willmainly concern the Polish domain registration aswell as regional and functional domains in the .pldomain. In its communiqué at the turn of2008/2009, NetArt said to have served 500,000domains. The number concerned all types ofdomains operated by it, the Polish ones as well asglobal and European. Other domain registeringcompanies do not present precise numbersregarding the operated domains. Among otherthings, on the basis of the data published byNetArt, it has been estimated that the totalnumber of all domains operated by the nationalregistry is approximately 1,700,000 (Polishdomains – 1,300,000, global domains – 280,000,European domains – 170,000). The 2008 datashows that the Polish registration market ofInternet domains has grown by about 700,000domains, hence over a 40 percent increase withina year.

There are two unquestionable leaders on thePolish domain market that comprise about 50percent of it: NetArt (www.nazwa.pl) andHome.pl (www.home.pl). There exist around100 other companies in Poland that perform thefunction of Internet domain registration but only9 of them hold more than 1 percent shares inthe market. The percentage share in the marketis calculated as two models: one being thenumber of subscribers operated by a given



registrar, the other being the number of .pldomains operated by it. It is crucial to rememberthat a subscriber is the final client, hence thefirst model is a statistic showing the marketsituation much most measurably.

According the „Domains of 2008” report byNASK (available online at www.dns.pl), the year2008 ended up with 1,300,000 .pl domainsregistered. In relation to the previous year,a 73.5 percent rise in the registration wasobserved. This was one of the most dynamicrises in the number of registration of all nationaldomains worldwide. In the same period theFrench domain, for instance, observeda 33 percent increase (Source: www.afnic.fr)while the Spanish a 34 percent one (source:www.nic.es). This dynamism was confirmed bythe registration of further new .pl domains in2008, which remained to be 1,800-2,000 daily.

Prices of Polish domains in 2008 were stable.Those of the .pl domains, offered to the finalclients by the registrars for extending thesubscription period oscillated between 80and 100 PLN. Additionally, 2008 was abound inpromotions led by the domain registrars wholowered the price of a single domain registrationfor the first subscription period to less than10 PLN (e.g. Nazwa.pl offered domains for 0 PLN,Domeny.pl for 7 gr, Home.pl for 90 gr). On thebasis of the number of domains registered, theheight of a renewal indicator as well as the meanprice of domain extension, it can be estimatedthat the Polish market is worth between80,000,000 to 100,000,000 PLN.

Secondary marketIn the past few years there took place many

transactions on the domain secondary marketthat have affected the formation of the image ofan Internet address as a valuable investment. Itis just enough to mention having sold thewww.n.pl domain for about 150 000 PLN or thewww.sport.pl domain for about 200,000 PLN in2007 (unofficial data). Also in 2008, there weredomain transactions amounting to high sums:www.domain.pl for USD 45,000, for EUR 25,000or deser.pl for EUR 2,000 (source: auctionservices Sedo.pl, Allegro.pl). In these cases, thedomain prices are known as the transactionswere carried out at an open auction. However,one should remember that the secondary marketholds a smaller share in the entire domain marketvaluation.

Domain registration worldwideThe number of all domains registered all over

the world is difficult to determine, all global,national, functional and regional domains ofparticular countries together with so-calledcontinental domains (e.g. .eu, .asia) are involved.According to www.webho-sting.info, at the endof 2008, there were about 104,000,000registered global domains. However, during the3-year period, from the moment when it wasfirst possible to register domains, until the endof the previous year, the number of Europeandomains registered was about 3,000,000. Themost common type of registered domains are.com domains that exceed 78,000,000. Amongnational domains, the most abundant ones are

Statistics concerning the number of domains served

Source: www.dns.pl, 2008

% 5 10 15 20 25 30

Nazwa.pl

Home.pl

Consulting Service

Az.pl

Domain Maker

Dinfo

Onet.pl

Active24

Michau Enterprises

27

24

9

8

4

4

3

3

2

Statistics concerning the number of subscribers served

Source: www.dns.pl, 2008

% 5 10 15 20 25

Nazwa.pl

Home.pl

Consulting Service

Az.pl

Domain Maker

Dinfo

Onet.pl

Active24

Key Systems

25

23

9

8

6

5

3

2

1



German .de domains which exceed 12,500,000.With respect to national domain registrations,Poland ranks 5th among European countries andis preceded only by Germany (12,500,000 .dedomains), Great Britain (over 7,300,000 .ukdomains), the Netherlands (over 3,000,000 .nldomains) and Italy (1,600,000 .it domains).Poland ranks 10th in the world among thosecountries with the greatest number of nationaldomains registered.

Polish market trendsAccording to NASK, the dynamism of the

increasing number of registered domains willoscillate between 9 and 10 percent quarterly in2009. The daily number of new domainregistrations next year has been forecast to bein the 1,800-2,000 range and the 70 percentdegree of extension of the existing registeredservices for the following subscription period hasbeen estimated (source: NASK „Domeny 2008”report, www.dns.pl).

The .pl domain is the most commonlyregistered domain in Poland, however verypopular are also: the .com domain (around150,000 registrations among the 270,000global domains registered in Poland), the .eudomain (175,000) and functional domainsbelonging to the .pl domain: com.pl (around250,000 registrations), net.pl (around 27,000),org.pl (around 19,000) and info.pl (around15,000). As regards the decreasing popularityof free addresses with the .pl extension, therehas been more interest in Polish regionaldomains. The most commonly registered regionaldomains in the .pl domain: waw.pl and wroclaw.plrecorded a 40 and 36 percent growth in theregistration number in 2009, respectively.

Extra services to domainregistration

NASK offers two extra services to the .pldomains registered and these comprise: theWait List Service (WLS or the so-called domainoption) and the Domain Name Testing (DNT).

DNT service activated in September 2007allows for testing a chosen domain for the periodof 14 days. In this way a person interested inregistering a domain can test a domain for1 PLN without having to pay for a one-year longregistration. Almost 100,000 domains were

tested until the end of 2008, out of which 8,700names were registered for a one-yearsubscription period after the testing. Theefficiency of DNT has remained 9 percent andthe quarterly number of tests has been forecastto be 13,000. The testing service is offered bynumerous registrars and provided by twodominating subjects: Az.pl (64 percent of DNTmarket) and Michau Enterprises (20 percent).

WLS’s popularity has increased and this isconnected with the lowering of its price sincethe beginning of 2008. The service is based ona paid domain reservation. The subject that haspurchased a domain option becomes itssubscriber once the current subscriber has notextended the domain for another subscriptionperiod. In this way over 15,000 domains wereregistered in 2008. Based on the number ofoptions founded in 2008, NASK has predictedthat around 32,000 WLS options will be boughtin 2009. Just like in the case of DNT, domainoptions are sold by numerous service providersin Poland and the greatest shares are held bytwo subjects: Michau Enterprises (59 percentof the market) and Az.pl (15 percent).

Hosting in PolandThe hosting service is based on making free

disk space on a WWW server and itsadministration tools available to clients. Withinthe confines of the available disk space, theserver ensures maintenance of a company WWWpage, e-mail address, databases, maintenance ofmany domains and convenient management ofservices. It is a necessary backup for everyWWW page functioning. The number of hostingservices in Poland is not known and neither isthe number of companies providing suchservices. The number of hosting services inPoland can be estimated on the basis ofwebsites functioning over the Internet togetherwith the number of domains registered.However, the number is not measurable enoughto determine, for the sake of the present report.It is assumed that the hosting service market isworth several times more that the domainregistration market (mainly because of higherservice prices).


Usability

Usability

Usability means designing interfaces to makethem more user – friendly. Usability’s goal is tocreate a simple, attractive and comprehensiblesolution that would be effective to use.

Adjusting the product to a user’s needprovides benefits for a service owner. This issignificant for those services that use complexfunctionalities such as payment transactionsor reservations. Services with high usability arecharacterized by high efficiency and its usersattachment and satisfaction.

While concentrating on the user, it isimportant not to forget that his needs andfeelings must meet his business goals andnecessities. Only once a compromise betweenthese two is reached, high usability of theservice will be ensured.

In relation to the Western market, Poland lagsseveral years behind the US, Germany orSweden. A service care has developed in Polandsince 2000. The 2007-2008 period was theheyday of those companies that specialized inusability research. Since the beginning of thisyear, usability research has permanently gaineda place in finance, insurance andtelecommunications. In the mechanisms ofa direct sale, an optimization of usability iscrucial for its effectiveness. Users’ feelings areparticularly important for lasting loyalty.

Usability’s popularity in Poland3 methods of usability research are popular in

Poland: expert audits, user research andeyetracking methods. The first method based onan expert’s knowledge and experience isparticularly offered by most companies in thetrade. The two remaining methods concern

contacts with the users and are offered by a fewcompanies in Poland. Usability research is madewithin the confines of marketing budgets orparticular computing projects. In practice, theknowledge of usability is currently acquired fromclassic marketing research (IDI, FGI, surveys,CA, TI). The development of usability research inPoland can only happen once specializedcompanies are commissioned to perform them.

Global trendsThe trend in usability is commonly understood

as a social committee. The tools should bedesigned so as to make them useful withoutfurther instructions. Specialization in the field ofusability concerns sale processes, optimizationof websites to which a user is re – directed andhow simple the mobile tools are in use. Designingwith the intention to evoke emotions in theusers has become more popular. It is describedas building the user experience of a brand andproduct.

Trends in PolandIn Poland usability is not only a trend but also

a requirement. Research dealing with the saleoptimization, usability research on cell phones aswell as neurophysiologically supported tests ofemotions are novelties. Expert audits are,despite their superficial role, relatively cheap inPoland and are used to preliminarily spotusability problems.

As a matter of fact, Poland lacks companiesspecialized in usability but the market’s potentialhas been spotted by Western companies thatsell professional research equipment.



Market problems, prospectsof usability development,attempts at integratingthis field into others

The market lacks highly – qualified usabilityexperts. There are no institutions that wouldprovide training in this field. Advancedpublications are only available in English.

The field of usability research is aninterdisciplinary direction that combinespsychological, technical, journalistic, social,artistic and marketing – business knowledge.

The clients’ growing requirements should beconductive to the development of usability.Thinking of usability as a public function ofservices on the Internet shows that this mightnot be only a passing trend. Usability is a socialmission, a necessity to secure the best serviceand its adjustment with respect to our needsfor the client.


Internet market research

Megapanel PBI/GemiusA research project that has a basic meaning

for the Polish Internet and the advertisingmarket is one executed by the Polish InternetResearch company working in cooperation witha research company Gemius to form MegapanelPBI/Gemius. The Megapanel PBI/Gemius researchis reliant on 4 different sources of data: socio--demographic information from recruitmentsurveys, the participants’ activity according tothe website research, information aboutgemiusTraffic system audited website ratingsand data on the number and structure ofInternet users in Poland, available from theMillward Brown SMG/KRC institution. Currently,there are almost 20,000 Internet usersregistered for the panel providing data on theWWW pages.

The Megapanel PBI/Gemius research providesdata on the number of users and their profilesfrom around 9,000 websites and Internetservices that have been visited by the Polishusers as well as the number of messenger users(applications like instant messaging) and theirprofiles. As early as September 2007, themeasurement also includes using RSS readersand desktop applications.

Apart from basic statistics like the number ofreal users, hits (openings), sessions and thetotal time spent on the website, a number ofderived indicators are available: the averagenumber of one user’s openings, an affinity indexor co-rating of chosen websites. The data can beanalysed and narrowed to fit the indicatedtarget groups and thanks to the filter option,the analysis may be narrowed to fit thosewebsites having particular values of particular

indicators. The Megapanel PBI/Gemius resultsare published monthly since October 2005 formonthly periods and for weekly periods sinceDecember 2005. The research result files aremade available until the 20th day of the secondmonth following the month the research hasconcerned. The data is available in thegemiusExplorer analytic application that allowsfor an export of the current analysis to the CSVformat and for copying it to a clipboard.

Parallel with the research results, a thematictree that groups the researched websites intocategories of similar content and character ispublished. The thematic tree consists of 12 maincategories of websites and services such as:

– Culture and entertainment;– News, commentary, media;– Communities;– Modern technologies;– Lifestyle;– Business, finance, law;– Education;– Motorization;– Sport;– Travel;– Work;– Construction industry and real estate.Moreover, the gemiusExplorer application

enables designing one’s own unit trees whichcould be used for analysis, together withauthorized aggregate trees that can, forinstance, bring together all the websitesbelonging to one publisher or the websiteswhose advertising space is being sold by onebroker.

Website ratings in Poland


Ale xa.comBecause of free access, the Alexa.com

statistics system is a tool used by a part ofwebsite owners to measure and compare theratings of particular websites. The results ofseveral million website ratings come fromactivity measurements of several millions ofusers worldwide that have the Alexa Toolbarapplication mechanism installed. The statisticsavailable are restricted to the accessibilityand number of openings.

The results of the measurements of thoseparticular websites available at Alexa.com havea questionable value as the selection of a sample(those volunteers that have installed the toolbar)is not at all representative of the internautpopulation and moreover, of groups of Web usersfrom particular countries. Owing to itsspecification and low resolution of the results,the Alexa system can only be used for estimatedmeasurements of changes in the ratings andthis is applicable only to greater websites.

Tracking research of websiteratings

ge miu sTraf ficThe most popular cracking system of website

ratings in Poland is the gemiusTraffic researchavailable in the Gemius company offer. Accordingto the company data, the research currentlycomprises almost 100 percent of theadvertising websites over the Polish Internet.

Information about internaut traffic in thewebsites under research has been collectedusing scripts that count the number of websitespublished in the code. On the basis of thecookies technology that allows for internautidentification, the system registers each suchopening. The results of the research arepresented in the actual time with the help of theinterface available at the window of a browser.

The gemiusTraffic research gives a greatamount of information concerning the behavior ofinternauts on the monitored website. The basicmeasuring unit is one opening which is an eventthat involves displaying websites with a counting



Figure 1.: Window of analysis of results of Megapanel PBI/Gemius research in gemiusExplorer program



script in its code on the internaut’s computer(conjecture – the internaut has seen it). Theregistered openings are the basis for countingthe indicators of the number of visits(a sequence of openings coming one afteranother), the number of unique users (cookies)who visited the website at a specific time (day,week, month) and the time spent on thewebsite. On the grounds of these basicindicators, gemiusTraffic counts the series ofmeasurements that describe the traffic on thewebpage more precisely. The interface providesinformation about the average time spent on thewebsite, the length and broadness of the visit aswell as reference statistics (reference pages,browsers and catalogues) through which theusers are directed to the monitored website.

The system enables a more precise analysis ofthe users’ visits to the website under researchand presents the paths that have been taken.The gemiusTraffic research also collects systemvariables such as versions of the browsers used,the type and version of the operations system orthe monitor resolution as well as geolocationdata that allows to assign a website visitor toa specific geographical region (continent,country, province and city in Poland).

An important advantage of the describedsystem is the possibility of independently makinga measuring tree that would model thestructure of the monitored website, and hencetracking the ratings of its particular parts inalmost any degree of detail (website, section,subsection, single webpage).

Numerous extra options are available in theinterface that facilitate management of evenvery complex websites: export reports withsource data, forecasting ratings, average valuesof particular ratings’ measurements, scriptsorting etc.

sta t24A second very popular tracking research in

Poland that monitors users and their behaviorson the website are stat24 statistics. Theproduct is, first of all, meant for small andmedium Internet services whose construction iscomplex enough to require more advanced tools.Thanks to the integration with the technologicalplatform of the Gemius company, the ratings’indicators available at stat24 are almostidentical to the gemiusTraffic research howeverthe way of presentation of the results on theinterface is different. At present, the stat24

Figure 2.: Interface of gemiusTraffic research results

system serves over 1,100,000 accounts andmeasures the traffic that exceeds 2,500,000openings monthly.

The stat24 statistics are available in 3 mainversions: free for companies and onlinebusinesses. Owners of home webpages, blogs,thematic and hobby websites are encouraged touse the basic version for free, however with thenecessity of putting a company logo on the mainpage of the monitored website and to agree toemit research surveys. As a matter of fact, theversion does not have a limit to the number ofopenings, nevertheless it enables using only twocounting scripts belonging to one domain. Itdoes not however give a possibility of measuringthe webpage size designed in the Flashtechnology, the number of webpages served inthe safe SSL connection and counting thenumber of clicks on the URL reference (the

measure of redirection). A more difficult task inthis version concerns using the presented data,since the interface does not permit access tosummary data or the so-called quick statisticsand different types of detailed information aboutthe website traffic. A version for companies (twovariants – statOptimum and statOptimum Plus)recommended for company and product websitesand vertical portals assumes the possibility ofusing 50 counting scripts belonging to a domainand has a monthly limit to the number ofopenings registered by the system. Just like thefree version, it allows neither measuring the sizeof the webpages served in the secure connectionnor does it count the number of clicks on a URL,however it does allow size measurements of thewebpages designed in the Flash technology. Onthe presentation level, only the number ofavailable information is restricted – some moreadvanced measures become inactive. The most

50 Raport strategiczny IAB Polska


Figure 3.: Interfacte of stat24 research results – standard version



complex version (also in two variants– statBiznes and statBiznes Pro) is designed forInternet publishers and enables them to use200 counting scripts that belong to one domain.The version does not at the same time containany extra restrictions imposed on the lowerversions. In all the paid options, the subscriptionprice of an account is dependent on the averagenumber of openings registered on the websiteduring the 3 subsequent calendar months.

Go ogle Ana ly tics The popularity of free system statistics

offered by the Google company, namely GoogleAnalytics, has gained more and more popularityin Poland. First of all this tracking solution isbeing used mainly by smaller websites since itsfree version does not impose a limit on thenumber of monthly openings only of thosewebsites that are at the same time customersof the Google AdWords system. For theremaining websites, the measurement limit hasbeen set up to be 5,000,000 openings monthly.Google Analytics is a suitable product for thosewho do not need to inspect the data that hasbeen updated in the actual time, simply asGoogle counts the ratings in general daily cycles.Undoubtedly, an added value of Google Analyticsis the close connection of its mechanisms withGoogle AdWords that permits monitoring thebehaviors and profitability of those users whofind the websites through particularadvertisements, browsers and e-mail campaigns,as well as analyzing conversion indicators andthe influence of advertising operations over theInternet.

Research of number andcharacteristics of Internetusers

Net TrackNowadays, NetTrack is the only wide opinion

poll tool providing information about the numberof Internet users in Poland as well as their socio--demographic profiles. This projects focuses onthe following:

– using Internet currently;– areas Internet usage and type of information

searched for;– place of Internet usage (access to Internet);– average time of Internet usage at home, in

office, at school/university, at friends’/familyplace, in Internet café/computer shop and otherplaces;

– frequency of Internet usage generally and indetails: at home, in office, at school/university,at friends’/family place, in Internet café/computershop and other places;

– access to Internet at home (havingconnection at home, planning to get accesswithin 6 months, way of connection to Internet,number of people using Internet at home);

– top-of-mind knowledge;– websites visited most often during by day

and night;– Internet shopping;– Internet messengers used;– using voice over IP technology.

The NetTrack research results can beanalyzed in typical demographic economicsections such as: gender, age, education level,place of residence (old and new province, region,size of place), marital status, socio-civil status,monthly income (one’s total family income andper capita in household). An unquestionableadvantage of NetTrack is that it is executed asa single source project with Miliward BrownSMG/KRC, the Polish Reading Research andTarget Group Index.

This makes further cross-sectional communityanalyses with regards to psychology, consumerbehaviors, lifestyles, attitudes and opinions,interests, preferred entertainment and leisureactivities of the Polish internauts possible. Since

the beginning of 2000, NetTrack has beenperformed by the Milliward Brown SMG/KRCinstitute on a representative sample of Polesaged 15-75. The results are collected by meansof personal interviews carried out at home. Thecurrent sample size is 4,000 monthly whichensures precise high resolution results that arepublished in the Soft Report Explorer formatmonthly.

Ad hoc Internet researchIn the past few years, ad hoc research on

Internet users has become more trendy. Amongthe other traditional types of research, ad hocdiffers in its low price, short executing time andhardly any geographical limits at all. Theresearch can be undertaken in two ways – by one– time sampling for the sake of a specific projectand on the panel users.

gemiusAdHocThe gemiusAdHoc research offered by the

Gemius company is conducted by means surveysemitted in pop-up windows of websites. Thesurveys are displayed randomly and the usersbecome a representative group of the Polishinternauts population, specific website orwebsite type or according to particular socio--demographic/behavioral features. With regardsto its specification, gemiusAdHoc is designed tomeet various informational needs of its clients.Depending on the chosen subject and frequencyof the research (single, continuous), it cansupport both the company’s operations andstrategic decision making. The research can alsobe useful for solving different marketingproblems by means of providing informationabout consumer needs and preferences, themarket’s segment structure, the company’simage, brand awareness, satisfaction and loyaltyof the clients as well as the market trends.

Panel researchCurrently, the panel of the research ARC

Rynek i Opinia company is Poland’s greatestpanel. It was launched in May 2001 and was at

the same time, the first panel of that type inPoland with 40,000 people registered atpresent. It is a continuous project whoseresearch problems concern both the Internetand the respondents’ opinion on newlyintroduced products, advertisements orbrands. With the help of an Internet consumerpanel, it is possible not only to find the opinionof the internauts or of a population with a highnumber of Internet users (e.g. cell phone,credit cards holders, bank clients), but also toresearch product – and Internet – connectedservices (product and packaging tests, logotypes, advertisement banners and concepts)and other marketing research. People who haveparticipated in the panel are rewarded withpoints that can be directly exchanged for cashor donated to charities. The Internet IMASOnLine panel of the IMAS International companyworks very similarly. The company enables therespondents to express themselves by meansof Internet surveys that present opinions andattitudes with regards to various issues. TheMarketing Research Center „Indicator” hasbeen executing a project named Inet panel – aninternational research panel comprising theBaltic Sea area with about 20,000 peopleregistered – in cooperation with a Danishcompany. The Ipsos company has introducedInno Track research that is designed fordetailed diagnosis of new product results. Theresearch allows for identifying specificconsumer groups and their profiles (peopleknowing the product, trying it out, rejecting it)as well as a broad why – buy – and – why– reject analysis. The e-panel project by PentorResearch International enables constantmonitoring of consumer preferences andacquiring extensive knowledge about theclients’ needs, expectations and opinions. Thepanel bases on the idea of making a communityby means of the Web and the usage ofqualitative marketing research methods. TheInstitute of Market and Public Opinion ResearchCEM, GfK Polonia and Millward Brown SMG/KRChave introduced their own Internet panels.

52 Raport strategiczny IAB Polska



Online advertising expenses

The value of Polish online advertising market in2008 amounted to PLN 1.17 billion1. It standsfor the value growth by 57 percent comparedwith the year 2007. With regards to the onlineformats the display advertising still constitutesthe largest part of the market, though its sharedropped from 42 percent to 40 percent. Alsothe share of classifieds and yellow pagesdecreased from 20 percent to 19 percent,whereas the importance of SEM advertisingincreased from 20 percent to 23 percent.

When analyzing the above data it should benoticed that in comparison with the year 2007the make-up of the base of enterprises takingpart in the IAB AdEx Research changed and theirtotal number increased by one entity. Clearly itmay influence the value of the whole marketdynamics and its particular segments. However,it is the unavoidable aspect of naturaldevelopment of the research and its “infantile”age (the survey was initiated on the Polishmarket only a year ago).

Chapter 2

ONLINE ADVERTISING

Online advertising expenses

Shares of online formats in net total expenses

Source: IAB AdEx2007 carried out by IAB Polska and PwCPolska

E-mail marketingOthers

Display SEM

Classifieds/yellow pages

20%

20%

12%

42%

6%

2007

2008


E-mail marketingOthers

Display SEM

Classifieds/yellow pages

19%

23%

12%

40%

6%


Internet 2008: Reklama online

The industry categories that made the largestinvestments in online advertising in 2008include: finances (13.2 percent of sharecompared to 11.3 percent in 2007),telecommunication (10.5 percent, drop from13.7 percent in 2007) and motorization(7.5 percent, drop from 8.0 percent). Othercategories are not fully comparable with theresults from the previous year as in the IABAdEx research the change of categories’classification was introduced, from the one usedby Nielsen into the one used more often inPoland, i.e. classification by Expert Monitor.

A trend that is worth noticing as regards theexpenses of enterprises on the online advertisingis also the settlement model for CPA (cost peraction). It refers mainly to such segments asfinances and e-commerce. Last year the totalexpenses on all advertising activities settled inthis model amounted to almost PLN 80 mln andcorresponded to 14 percent of revenues of theenterprises that offered to their clients thismodel2.

Shares of industry categories in net total expenses


Hygiene and care

Computers and audio/video

Finances

Travelling and tourism, hotels and restaurants

Beverages and spirits

Clothes and accessories

Pharmaceutical products and drugs

Household utility products

Others

Household equipment, furniture and decorations

Telecommunication

Motorization

Media, books, CD and DVD

Retail

Hobbies

Food

nd drugs Media, bookCD and DVD

13.2%

10.5%

7.5%

5.9%

3.4%

5.2%

2.8%2.3%1.5%1.5%1.5%1.2

%1.0%0.1%

6.4%

35.9%

1 Data IAB/PwC Poland on the basis of the research IAB AdEx2008.29 enterprises took part in the research

2 IAB Polska estimation on the basis of the IAB AdEx research 2008.Data as regards CPA revenues were contributed by 12 enterprisestaking part in the research.

maj 2009 dodatek do „Media & Marketing Polska” 55

Display advertising

Display advertising

The year 2008 within the display advertisingcan by all means be called in Poland the year ofrich media. Advertisers and the agenciesrepresenting them, in cooperation with Internetmedia, decided to make use of non-standardoptions within the already existing advertisingformats in numerous advertising campaigns. Theconcept of “rich media” comprises e.g. suchfunctions within advertising creations asinteraction with a customer, sounds or films,expandable creatives, loading and displayingadditional advertising contents at the request ofa customer etc. It gives an almost unlimitedrange of possibilities of forming advancedcreatives which enable to go beyond the passiveadvertising message and to engage customersinto a dialogue with a brand.

As regards the popularity of display formatsno considerable changes took place last year, i.e.in-page formats as well as sponsorshipsgathered in all 79 percent of advertising budgetsdestined for display, whereas “interruptive”formats – 21 percent. Within the in-page formatwhat functioned very strongly was the doublebillboard which in fact is a typical format for thePolish market and occurs nowhere else in theworld. It dethroned the format that had beenmost popular beforehand i.e. billboard. Also theformats defined generally as rectangle, i.e.creatives of 300x250 pixels, have grown inimportance.

In next sub-chapters other most interestingtrends within display advertising such as videocommercial and behavioural targeting are talkedmore widely about.

Shares of formats of display advertising

Source: IAB AdEx 2008 (IAB and PwC Polska)

in-page formats

sponsorshipsinterruptive formats

display advertising in e-mail

1%

8%

21%

70%



Video development in InternetLast year confirmed the importance of video

contents in Internet. They became one of the basicsources of information and entertainment in thenet. All this was reflected in advertising as well. TheIAB AdEx research showed that the expenses onvideo commercials amounted in 2008 to as much asPLN 44.5 mln which constituted 7 percent of totaladvertising revenues of enterprises which offer suchservices3. The value of video commercials for theAmerican online market estimated by IAB AdExamounts to USD 734 mln. It is over twice as muchas in 2007 when this value amounted to USD 324mln4. Not only did a progressing increase in numberof quick connects contribute to this situation, butalso popularization of various mobile devices enablingboth consumption and video contents creation did.What is more the quality of online video materialsincreases successively. In the United Statesstreaming in HD quality is a standard nowadays.

We may observe a similar process in Poland,however, it is not as fast as the overseas one.In “The Global Information technology report 2008--2009”5 Poland was classified at the remoteposition of 69 (per 134 classified countries) asregards the development of information society. Oneof the classifying criteria was the progress withinbroad band services which are a basic indicator ofvideo development in Internet.

In the research carried out by Gemius6 in the 3rdquarter of last year 76 percent Polish internautsdeclared contact with video contents in Internet,and 70 percent of them watch videos at least a fewtimes a week. These values did not change inrelation to the previous research carried out in May20077. The group watching video in the net includes70% internauts under the age of 35, slight majorityof males. These, however, declared more frequentwatching of online video than females did.

The most popular service among Polish Internetusers is invariably YouTube.com, which in November2008 recorded over 7.1 mln users8. Servicesaggregating video contents such as YT or thesecond popular – Wrzuta.pl use the in-page player. Itenables broadcasting in full screen. The mechanismof film embedding makes them available on numerousexternal pages, in blogs and portals. Moreover, also

the websites basing solely on video contents werecreated.

What should be paid attention to is thephenomenon of dynamically developing Internettelevisions last year9. These interactive platformsimport contents from traditional television, butmost of all they create their own. Contrary to shortvideo forms, Internet televisions usually rely on anadditional software and are characterized withstream broadcasting offering to the audience theoption of switching over various channels10.

What is also worth noticing is the dynamicdevelopment of Internet serials in Polish Internet.Productions based on the success of such hits as“LonelyGirl15” or “KateModern” become more andmore popular among both internauts and marketers.They offer a range of possibilities – starting froma classic product placement and finishing on tribalmarketing.

The interest of Polish internauts in video contentsin the net resulted in the popularity growth of thisformat among advertisers. It caused thedevelopment of new products by offerors of Internetadvertising area. Video commercials made a stay inportals and subject websites; what appeared on themarket is both interactive production housesspecialising in creating video forms and the entitiesspecializing solely in their broadcasting.

For certain, last year witnessed quite a growthwithin video commercials; however, this line stillfaces numerous challenges such as the preparationof conventional standards. Online video is stillperceived in Poland as a luxurious accessory andmarketers allocate relatively little budgets for it.

Online video and TV spotThe strategy that is most often encountered in

Poland is the transmission of a spot known from TVin the net. Though Internet is not a simplesubstitute for television. Due to the specificcharacter of both media the way video contents arereceived from Internet differs from the consumptionof traditional television. Its simplest example relatesto the rule, however unfortunately not in force inPoland, of watching an online advertising spotwithout sound which enables an internaut to maketheir choice. Another issue regards the duration of

Video in Internet


Video in Internet

a commercial film, i.e. in Internet short forms whichare also characterized with little importance arepreferred. An internaut is able to turn offa commercial quickly and for this reason spotsproduced for Internet should be dynamic and arouseinterest e.g. by additional value in the form of anentertaining or educational layer. It is confirmedby the latest research11 according to which videocontent is created especially for the needsof Internet is bound to gain importance.

Internet is an unlimited well of possibilities forcreators of spots. What constitutes the undeniableadvantage of Internet commercials that cannot beforgotten and that has already been mentioned istheir interactivity. Another aspect is a moreaccurate than on TV adjustment of a commercialto the contents viewed by a user and even targetinga message to a precisely defined target group.

The countability of an online video is a crucialfactor differentiating it from a television spot. Notonly does the net enable the measurement oftransmissions of a given commercial, but it alsorecords clicks and other ways of interaction witha given creation, behaviour of internauts once itreaches the target side as well as the number ofrepeated displays of a spot or a spot moment whichit reached. These data constitute a source ofinformation about audience and are of use foradjusting on current basis their message accordingto needs and at the same time they allow tooptimize a given campaign and its costs. What stillremains unsolved is the issue related to conversionof Internet indicators into television researchmethods.

As it can be seen, a video in the net can functionas a perfect television message reinforcement.Not only does an advertiser build on a range ofa campaign reaching such part of an audience thatis harder to reach by television, but also is able tolocate a selected group and to enter into a so-calledmeasurable dialogue with its members. Onlineactivities should still be coherent with thecommunication present in other media, relate to itor constitute its development, e.g. alternativeversion of a spot, making off in the net etc.

Development of formats suchas rich media in 2008

The year 2008 brought a few novelties within theapplication of video and solutions such as rich mediain Internet advertising campaigns.

Crucial distinguishing features of these formatsinclude keeping an internaut on the creation level andoffering him/her numerous possibilities without thenecessity of going to a webpage. These formatsthemselves may contain their menu, minilibrary withvideo materials or files to be loaded. This type ofcreations constitutes an effective tool to builda brand awareness and also is characterized withhigh effectiveness measured by the conversionof clicks on actions (acc. to statistics from firstrealizations of this type in Poland).

One of examples of such creations is video cubeformat used for the first time in Poland last year.It is a layered form applied on the window ofa search engine making use of flash technologyor 3D interaction video. Such creations are in theshape of a cube on whose sides various video filescan be placed. This cube can be manipulated byshifting its respective walls, playing back films. Thusa viewer finds himself on the level of creation, mayinfluence what he watches at the same timecommuning with a brand even before deciding toenter the webpage. The format is not closed aftera given time, but the moment a user does a specificactivity, it is a user who decides how long he wantsto make use of it. After first successful attempts ofthis format releases this video format wasintroduced to the offer of one of portals.

Other interactive video formats used in 2008 arealso double billboard and skyscraper. The formats likethese may include their own menu in the form ofbookmarks presenting e.g. a library of videomaterials. It is also possible to collect virtualgadgets, such as wallpapers, screen savers orwhole applications directly from a creation.

Though the solutions discussed still constitutea slight percentage of creations applied incomparison with the estimation of eMarketer sayingthat this type of formats will constitute almost onefifth of expenses on online advertising in the UnitedStates in 2012, they lay foundations for advancingthe thesis that also in Poland this tendency willdevelop dynamically in the nearest future. It alsoseems that the economic crisis will not havea bigger influence on online video, the advertisers inthe United States are going to spend USD 2.57billion in 2009, i.e. 22.5 percent more than in 2008,on the advertising broadcasted in video materials inInternet.12



Bartosz Drozdowski, managing directorARBOinteractive Polska:

A TV advertising spot is the most perfect,most popular and most suggestive form ofadvertising that a human being has inventedso far. The combination of its advantages withthe most perfect media which, in my opinion,Internet is and, most of all, the possibility ofinteraction and efficiency measurement is themixture that after a bitmap and vectorgraphics will be a new standard of quality.

Michał Kidała, interactive mediamanager Hypermedia:

Rich media-based formats are the futureof display advertising. It is noticed bymarketers and interactive communicationagencies in Poland. Making use of such formsof communication is not easy. It requiresmore work and time to create a message andto plan interaction with a user. Moreover,technological (ad serving) solutions frequentlyused by local editors are a restraint that ishard to overcome, each time they requirenegotiations and an individual approach.

Wojciech Drath, creative directorOpcom Grupa Eskadra:

Two different media: Internet and televisionare getting together. They begin to have moreand more in common and they seem to bebuilding quite a durable relationship. For thetime being links “crunch” and we accept poorquality picture but more and more advancedproductions begin to appear. Video in Internetno longer stands only for amateur shortmovies created by internauts and corporativepages with talking figures. Movie-makerslearn this new medium, producers seekbusiness models, internauts raise the bar – itis nice to see how new quality derives from it.

3IAB Polska estimation on the basis of the survey of IAB AdEx 2008. Dataas regards revenues settled by CPA were contributed by 12 enterprisestaking part in the survey.4IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report.5”The Global Information Technology Report 2008-2009”http://www.weforum.org.pdf/gitr/2009/gitr09fullreport.pdf 6Consumption of media. Ways of Internet usage among internauts, wave:November-December 2008. Report of Gemius, January 2009.http://pliki.gemius.pl/Raporty/2009/01_2009_Konsumpcja_mediow.pdf 7Consumption of media. Ways of Internet usage among internauts, wave:May 2008. Report of Gemius, July 2009.http://pliki.gemius.pl/Raporty/2008/01_2008_Konsumpcja_mediow.pdf8Megapanel PBI/Gemius, November 2008, N=16 679.9Polish Internet 2008/2009, Gemius, Warszawa, February 2009.10Kaznowski D. Nowy Marketing, [New Marketing] Warszawa 2008 p.119.11“Pro Online Video Views 1998-2012”, AccuStream iMedia Research.12“Pro Online Video Views 1998-2012”, AccuStream iMedia Research.


Behavioural targeting

What is behavioural targeting?Behavioural targeting came into being in the

United States in reply to the need of reduction ofso-called media losses. They appear when not allusers of a given medium/-a given website constitutea target group of a campaign, i.e. it reaches alsopersons outside a target group. In such case wespeak of so-called empty contacts.

This situation, in a way, also takes place in case ofclassic behavioural targeting which is based on ananalysis of contents watched by a customer and ofactivities performed by him/her in the net. The toolspresently being developed enrich additionallyinformation obtained this way by features that arehard to identify on the basis of CTR analysis andhits, i.e. in particular socio-demographic featuresand related to one’s lifestyle and social position.The solutions of this type bring a considerablequality change into advertising campaigns realizedin Internet.

On the basis of any combination of such featuresbehavioural targeting systems enable the creationof detailed profiles of internauts as well as theidentification of an internaut of a given profileregardless of a service he is currently in.In practice it means that it is possible to transmita commercial to a customer interested in e.g.motorization not only within motorization contents,but also within other ones, which enables the use ofeven less popular services. This model is also calledaudience-centric media buying, i.e. buying of hits ofindividual internauts and not the hits within a givensubject-matter.

Behavioural targeting tools give lots ofadvantages. An advertiser is able to reach preciselydefined segments of customers that are mostvaluable for a given campaign. What is more, thesetools make the optimization of a campaign in realtime possible as a system displays an advert to thecustomers who have hitherto showed their interestin commercial communication. It allows to achieve

a considerable level of such campaign’seffectiveness. An advertiser reaching the samenumber of customers is able to buy a much smallernumber of hits, in other words, the same effect isreached, however, at a smaller expense.

Behavioural targeting appears to be beneficial notonly to advertisers, but also to editors and ownersof webpages. They are able to prepare an offer forusers of particular profiles/interests regardless tothe subject matter of a given webpage. This wayadvertising potential of a website is used to itsmaximum and the level of users’ irritation is reducedto its minimum since they are presenteda commercial matching their own profiles.

Behavioural targeting in PolandFirst Polish attempts related to the actions

within behavioural targeting were taken by Internetportals. The solutions of the time were based andstill are on independently developed technology.Behavioural targeting of a new generation appearedin Poland in 2007. Then international suppliers ofbehavioural targeting technologies entered thePolish market enabling the usage of technicalsolutions combing both an analysis of internautbehaviour as well as declarative data and offeringadvanced tools for data analysis, user segmentationand profile creation.

During that year the issue of behaviouraltargeting became extremely popular. Behaviouraltargeting products were implemented by themajority of entities present on the Internetadvertising market. Also the first audience-centricadvertising network was created. What conducedand still does the solutions of this type is thesituation of the world economy. Growing economiccrisis contributed to the importance increase ofeffective marketing actions which behaviouraltargeting fits perfectly.

A similar situation is taking place in the UnitedStates. Although that market has a much longer

Behavioural targeting


Internet 2008: Online Advertising

experience than the Polish one as regards the issueof buying Internet advertising it is still in the courseof a development phase. EMarketer estimates thatin 2008 the costs for the campaigns making use ofbehavioural targeting amounted to USD 1 billion.This amount constitutes 11 percent of Americancosts of display sector, rich media and videoadvertising and is to increase up to 25 percentin 2011.13

Future of behavioural targetingThe services within behavioural targeting

presently available are distinguished withconsiderable advancement in comparison with thefirst solutions of this type. Targeting still remainsa relatively young field that requires the preparationof regulations related in particular to safety andconfidentiality of user data as well as intensiveeducation of the market. The possibility of realizingan advertising action that is adjusted to particularusers and their individual behaviours, not to a givenmedium, changes the philosophy of media planning.Agencies and customers, as well as website editorsface a challenge requiring the change of the waythey think about online campaigns and alsounderstanding of targeting mechanisms.

One of the basic interpretational errors is theconviction that using behavioural targeting resultsonly in CTR increase. Targeting enables advertisersto reach a defined group, whereas it has noinfluence on click-through ratio which results fromnumerous and various factors, such as: creation,form or location of a commercial communicationwithin a website. Precision and correct identificationof advertising receivers as well as its transmissiondirected exclusively to them may contribute to andusually, to a large degree, it does to the increase ofCTR level, however, it is not a rule.

Another doubt is related to the fact that profilesbeing gathered by behavioural targeting systemscan be replaced with profiles available in MegapanelPBI/Gemius research. It should be remembered,however, that Megapanel informs about a statisticdistribution of particular profiles, but it does notmake the identification of internauts fulfilling theindicated criteria possible, neither does it enableadvertising display only for them.

Another step which is a natural phase ofbehavioural targeting development should be theinterest in retargeting solutions. Although it allows

to transmit advertising campaigns only for theusers who fulfil given behavioural or demographicfeatures, behavioural targeting does not provide anadvertiser with a possibility of verifying who shouldconstitute his target group. Retargeting mechanismby the measurement of behaviour of the websiteusers enables an advertiser to determine who suchgroup is so as to be able later on to transmit suchadvertising campaign to these users and alike.Retargeting allows to define precisely behaviouralprofiles of users of an advertiser’s website and toenter into communication by advertising actions onlywith such users.

GLOSSARY:

Behavioural targeting – methodology ofadvertising campaign transmission in Internet basedon advanced website tools enabling the identificationof user behaviours and to adjust only on its basisa commercial communication for them.

Predictive behavioural targeting– methodologies that enrich traditionalmeasurement of behaviours of Internet users withdeclarative data obtained from questionnairetransmission. On their basis statistical modelsof user behaviours are created and they preventfrom creating the effect of so-called limited rangewhich takes place when a small group of usersdespite their interest in a given subject does notclick, nor does it view the related contents.

Media losses – the effect that occurs in thesituation when a campaign is transmitted withina medium in which a target group does notconstitute 100 percent users. Thanks to varioustargeting methods, e.g. behavioural targeting, suchlosses can be limited to a large degree byidentification of users being in a target group.

Audience-centric buying model – campaign buyingmodel for advertisers that consists in thetransmission of a commercial communication onlyto particular users regardless of the area they arecurrently in.

13 Hallerman, Behavioral Targeting: Advertising Gets Personal, eMarketer,June 200


How to measure engagement

How to measure customer engagement ininteraction with a brand? How to create aneffective message that will distinguish itself in thesurrounding world? In the world wherea customer creates a brand by what he thinksand says about it. In the world where customersexpect something more from products than merefulfilment of basic functions. In the world whereour audience believe more in opinions of strangersthan in traditional advertising. When creatinga relation between a brand and a customerlimiting to the ways of communication relyingsolely on providing a customer with informationis not enough. Saying the right things in the righttime to the right persons is no longer enough.A dialogue with a customer should be carried outin the most engaging manner possible. Only thena customer will want to pay attention to ourmessage and will try to understand it. And onlythen such dialogue makes sense. Ineffectivecommunication of a brand with its customerresults in the lack of desirable reaction ofa customer which hampers and even preventsfrom the realization of business or marketingobjectives.

The element of engagement becomes a keycomponent going between catching customer’sattention to our brand and him taking aparticular action. It is particularly important incase of Internet which allows to follow a fulldecision path, starting from product recognitionand finishing on its purchase.

One of the key advantages of engagement isits universality that by skilful use of the righttechniques enables the realization of diverseobjectives, regardless of the are we move in andwhat reply we expect from the audience.

Engagement is a highly subjective and variablefactor determining a brand capacity to make theaudience interested in and willing to takedesirable actions, thus more and more entitiestry to define and quantify it (Forrester Research,Nielsen AG, McKinsey & Company). Masteringthe skill of engagement level measurementresults directly in the possible effectivenessgrowth and the control of actions taken torealize strategies. It is particularly important incase of the most dynamically developing areassuch as social media and video, as they have attheir disposal incommensurably high potential ofaudience engagement in comparison withstandard advertising forms. Properly designedand standardized indicator will allow advertisersto understand better both interactive mediumcapacity and rightness of allocated budgets.

Definition of engagementEngagement is most of all a subject of

debates of marketing theoreticians andpracticians. Some proclaimed it the word of theyear, whereas others treat is as yeti,nevertheless it became the hottest topic of theline. Lots of opinions are expressed on thissubject and thus various definitions determining

How to measure engagement

Interest Engagement Action


Internet 2008: Online advertising

its form appeared as well. One of them describesengagement as “an active involvement ofa customer in a brand communication enforcedby the surrounding context”. Whereas themeasurement of its action effectiveness shouldclearly determine the degree and quality ofcustomer engagement in brand actions inrelation to clearly defined objectives.

Engagement in realitySince the definitions themselves operating

on the level of theory do not fully meet the needsof their practical use, Forrester Research madean attempt to define the factors forming theconcept of engagement.

By formalizing the definition of engagementForrester Research distinguished fourcomponents of this phenomenon defined asEngagement Index:

– Involvement – is understood as thepresence of a customer in places where he hascontact with a brand. It is expressed withnumerical values such as a number of hits or thetime spent on a website;

– Interaction – describes actions that a usertakes in places where he has contact witha brand. Depending on objectives assumed theycan include various actions such as: clickinga banner, inscribing a newsletter, downloading aninformation brochure, watching video materials,contacting an advisor or buying a product. Theyare measured by the number of actions takenand the degree of their completion;

– Intimacy – stands for an emotionaldetermination of the attitude towards a productor a given service. It defines the customersatisfaction from the interaction with a productor with a brand itself. It may manifest itself inthe form of commentaries on blogs or opinionson forums or opinionating services;

– Influence – is determined in actions hat aretaken by customers in order to share theiropinion and influence the opinion of othersconsciously or unconsciously. They frequentlyconstitute a manifestation of actions of a loyalcustomer who is a brand ambassador.

Engagement indicator model(online insurance purchase)

Source: Forrester Research Inc.

Involvement

InteractionIntimacy

Influence

Interactntimacy

37%30%

18% 15%

Engagement indicator model(image creation of a clothing brand)


Involvement

InteractionIntimacy

Influence

Interactntimacy

60%

2%5%

33%


How to Measure Engagement

Depending on an assumed strategy and onexpected results a scenario of customerbehaviour is to be created and then theimportance of each of the components ina particular situation is to be determined as thestructure of an engagement indicator will differin case of actions that are of business nature(e.g. online insurance purchase) from the onesthat are of marketing nature (e.g. imagecreation of a clothing brand being introducedto the market).

For the Index to be reliable its structureshould be a resultant of a strategy approvedthat is determined before being executed. Nextthe results of actions carried out and theireffects should be subjected to final evaluation forthe purpose of determining the optimumarchitecture of engagement elements.

The engagement components must bereflected in actual actions.

Has the time for engagementcome yet?

Interaction constituting the foundationsof Internet is one of the key elements enablingactive involvement of a customer in brandactions. The engagement in a more or lessdeveloped form is nowadays present in almostany sign of this interactive medium functioning.The range of solutions, social media or videoin particular, requires rules for measurementof their effectiveness and influence on buildinga relation between a brand and a customerto be prepared.

Although presently there is no universal andcommon engagement indicator it is worth tocarry out measurement on one’s own. However,this indicator structure should be properlybalanced between measurable elements and theelements that are hard to be expressedby means of numerical values as also emotionalfactors influence engagement and without themthe evaluation of effects of carried out actionswould not be complete.



Presently the tendencies on the marketingmarket in search engines are determined by twofactors, i.e. the increasing awareness of searchengine users enforcing advertisers to develop theiradvertising campaigns as well as the economic crisisinducing advertisers to put more pressure onmeasuring effects of advertising campaigns.

As it may be concluded from HitWise researchthe queries asked in search engines are gettinglonger and longer. Users still keep on writing two --word-queries, nevertheless the majority are thequeries consisting of three or more words(55 percent of all queries14).

Such situation proves the increasing awarenessof users as regards the capacities that searchengines have. Longer and longer queries are also thereply to constantly increasing resources being

gathered in the global network. One’s wish toreceive the most accurate results possible forcesa user to be more precise when asking their queryin a search engine. This in turn requires aconsiderable expansion of structure and vocabularyof advertising campaigns in search engines and thusconsequently bigger popularity, in particular amongSEM agencies, is won by systems of automaticbinding as well as by softwares enabling precisemanagement of a very expanded campaigns.

Progressing proffesionalization of SEM servicesparticularly in the markets in the West is anoticeable change. More and more large advertisersdecide to entrust their campaigns conducted insearch engines to specialized entities, suchtendencies are likely to be even stronger inconsecutive years; the competition growing among

SEM – Search EngineMarketing

Click percent according to the length of queries in search engines


1 2 3 4 5 76

-5

%

5

10

15

20

25

20.9

6

20.9

9

24.9

1

23.6

5 22.0

3

21.9

2

14.5

4

14.8

9

8.20 8.68

4.32 4.65

2.23 2.49

January 2009January 2008 annual change

number of words in a query


SEM – Search Engine Marketing

search engines as well as the pressure to ROImaximization demand from advertisers conductingmore and more advanced, and what follows time--consuming, campaigns.

Also the market of search engines has changed;during a few years it transformed from a nichemarket into a mass market in the full sense of thisword. In the largest countries the leaders asregards the range are search engine platforms thatovertake the most popular portals. The masscharacter of search engine markets makes findinga niche that is not managed by advertisers harderand harder. Year by year more and more businesslines notice the potential that SEM offers. On theother hand high competitiveness and large inflationof prices for redirection in the most popular searchengine systems induce advertisers to searchalternative search engine platforms.

The share of expenses spent on marketing insearch engines amounted in 2008 to 23 percentwhich stands for the amount of PLN 269.1 mln.15 Incomparison with the year 2007 (PLN 146.3 mln)the expenses on SEM increased by 84 percent (!)thus making search engine marketing the fastestdeveloping branch of online advertising. The growthin outlays of advertising in search engines that hasbeen taken place for a few years now results froma few factors. In 2008 small and mediumenterprises seeking methods of promotion withintheir little marketing budgets contributed to thegrowth of expenses on SEM. Nevertheless, whatbecomes visible is also another trend, i.e. shiftingbudgets from offline to Internet, including SEM toa large degree. Media houses and large interactiveagencies that more frequently open their own unitsdealing with marketing in search engines gain moreand more importance as the players of themarketing payers. The media houses themselvesappreciated last year marketing potential of searchengines by directing more and more parts ofbudgets of their customers to SEM. The increase ofexpenses on advertising in search engines is theoutcome not only of popularity increase of this formof advertising, but also of the increase of averageprice per a click resulting from the auction systemand a larger competitiveness among advertisers.

The year 2008 was another year when theposition of the largest search engine on the Polishmarket – Google – increased. As the consequence ofthe dominating position of Google within the marketof search engines the word “google” became an

equivalent of the “search engine” phrase. There area few reasons of this situation, not only the growthof Google.pl domain (85.6 percent at the end of200816), but also the fact that this search engine isplaced in portals and services – two significantplayers on the Polish Internet market (Onet.pl andNasza-klasa.pl) implemented on their websitesGoogle search engine.

Last year we faced also a dynamic growth ofcontextual advertising market. Not only does it referto the number of players who appeared on themarket, but also the variety of advertising productsavailable in contextual networks. The transmission ofadvertising initiated by Google in 2004 also on thepartner websites of AdSense systems madecontextual advertising stay in SEM budgets forlonger.

In 2008 the Polish market had, except forGoogle with AdSensea and NetSprint withAdContext which deliver contextual advertising,also some other contextual systems not havingroots in the solutions related to search engines,like e.g. Smartcontext, Business click,Onetkontekst. Taking into consideration the factthat a contextual selection is one of the crucialfactors influencing the profitability of advertisingactivities, dynamic development of partnernetworks transmitting contextual advertisingdoes not seem such a surprise. In accordancewith Enquiro Research it is the contextualconnection of advertising that could result in theincrease of buying intentions by even 36 percent.What is more in case of contextual selection wedeal with a much better adjustment ofcommercial communication to a brand.

Trends within the market ofmarketing in search engines

According to the data published by SEMPO theAmerican market of SEM was last year worth overUSD 12 billion (research covered both payable formsof advertising and expenses incurred on optimizationof websites in natural results SEO) which incomparison with the year 2007 stands for over40 percent growth.

Most estimations related to expenses incurredon advertising assume a dynamic growth ofexpenses on marketing in search engines. Accordingto eMarketer in the next five years the expenses onSEM are expected to be doubled. Observingtendencies present on the markets in the West is



essential provided that they indicate the directionthe Polish advertising market is aiming at.

SEM campaigns match perfectly the clearlyarticulated expectations of advertisers who in thetimes of the crises declare their willingness toinvest their marketing budgets in advertisingproducts that can be precisely measured and will becharacterized with high profitability. Despite thefact that the forecast of a drop in advertisingexpenses is not a pessimistic scenario for SEMmarket, the pressure to restrict costs, to freezeinvestments, the drop in tendency to risk anddemand for effectiveness of carried out activities isalso quite a challenge for marketers conductingcampaigns in search engines and contextualnetworks.

Therefore, the next year will be a year ofscrupulous planning of SEM activities in order tomake the best of potential of advertising productsavailable. Apart from precise determination ofcampaign objectives a large pressure must beexerted on the optimization of advertising activitiescarried out and on the measurement ofeffectiveness of related internaut actions. The SEMmarket itself is bound to change as well,performance marketing will enjoy increasingpopularity.

Effectiveness Indicatorsof SEM Campaigns

Advertising campaigns in search engines becamemuch more advanced, also the concept of campaigneffectiveness evolves. Still the factor related toadvertising that is the greatest importance is theredirection of the traffic to a website, neverthelessadvertisers more frequently tend to pay attention tothe quality of this traffic. There are more and morecampaigns in which the traffic redirected fromsearch engines is monitored thoroughly and theconversion rate as well as ROI (Return onInvestment) decide whether a campaign issuccessful or not. The second most important

measurable factor of a campaign specified in SEMPOreport by marketers is the conversion ratio whichshows that in the eyes of advertisers an effectivecampaign stands most of all for a campaign withhigh conversion result.

Campaign objectivesThe primary objectives of a campaign have not

changed, the marketers taking part in SEMPOresearch still most frequently indicate theenforcement of a brand image on the market as thecampaign objective (important to 63 percent ofrespondents), the other objectives of importanceindicated are as follow: direct sale (important to61 percent), online action support or winning trafficfor a website. In 2008 an increasing number ofmarketers started to pay attention to the resultsreturned by search engines after writing a productor a brand name. The global economic crisis isexpected to set new objectives to campaigns and tohave advertisers start to take more notice toconversion cost.

The year 2008 brought a significant change asregards the results of search, i.e. placement (firstin the Western countries, then in Poland) of newfunctionalities in search results by Google. After theincreasing number of queries of users, what appearsin research results, apart from standard links towebsites, includes graphical links with video resultsrelated thematically with a user query, mapfragments (from Google Maps) or links summarizinga set of information in reply to a given query. Googleexplains the implementation of these hitherto non-standard links in the search results as their care forresults and facility for users. Using newfunctionalities for advertising purposes is bound tobe a new challenge to advertisers and the wholeSEM branch.

In relation to the almost total domestication ofcontextual advertising in SEM budgets a ProductPaid Placement Portfolio available within programshas been considerably enriched with new advertising

Expenses on advertising in search engines in the United States in the years 2007-2013 asregards a type (in billions of USD)

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013PPC advertising 10,691 12,286 13,880 15,552 17,686 19,530 Search Engine Organization (SEO) 1,550 1,825 2,100 2,550 3,200 3,850 Total expenses on SEM 12,241 14,111 15,980 18,102 20,886 23,380 Source: eMarketer.com


SEM – Search Engine Marketing

forms. What is additionally used within SEMbudgets, apart from text forms, includes also:graphic-text forms (e.g. Adkon-Text-Exclusive), staticgraphic forms (billboard, rectangle, skyscraper andothers) as well as fully multimedia flash or videoanimations.

A revelation of the year 2008 was the use ofinnovatory method of contextual advertisingpresentation in the form of Intelli Text advertising bycontextual networks (other names of thisadvertising are: intelligent text, wordlayer,rectangle, intertext). These advertising forms areactivated only when a user moves his mouse overthe key words marked in a text. And thus anadvertising message is presented according to thekey words defined by an advertiser in the contentsof articles which are connected contextually withthe range of such advertiser’s services. Intelli Textadvertising presents both text forms, text-graphicforms as well as flash and video animations.

As regards the settlement model CPC dominates(clicking an ad and moving to an advertiser’swebsite). Some contextual networks permitalternatively payment in the CPM hit model (inparticular in case of video products).

ProspectsDespite the economic slowdown the forecasts for

the advertising market seems to be promising. ThePolish market of SEM has been developingdynamically for last years and though the presenteconomic situation may decrease this dynamicsa bit, still it seems, when we look at the expenseson SEM in the Western countries, that this branchhas large growth potential. Advertisers will spendtheir budgets on advertising in search engines morewillingly than on other media. According to SEMPOonly 14 percent of researched advertisers say theyare going to spend less on SEM in 2009 than in2008. Due to the possibility of directing theadvertising to a defined group of customers, thelarge measurability of advertising effects as wellas a relatively small entrance barrier we may soonwitness the acceleration of budget allocation changefrom traditional media to SEM.

Expenses on advertising in search engines in the United States in the years 2007-2013 (expressed in billions of USD)

Source: eMarketer.com

mldUSD

5 10 15 20

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

8.8

10.7

12.3

13.9

15.6

17.7

19.5

Traced results of SEM program success – “What indicators did you pay attention to when tracing a search engine marketing campaign?”

Source: SEMPO

% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

CTR

Conversion ratio

CPC

Conversion cost

Traffic increase

ROI

75

73

70

67

60

56



The objective to be realized when using search engine marketing – “What did your company use search engine marketing for?”

Source: SEMPO

% 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

To direct the trafficto a website advertised

To obtainpotential customers

and finalize transactions

To sell products/servicesdirectly by website

To promote information& educational forms

Others

To improve/change

the brand awareness

To obtainpotential customers

for one’s distributors in the net

5870

6163

5458

4249

1317

816

12

number of employees in a company below 500

number of employees in a company above 500

14HitWise, January 200915IAB Polska estimation on the basis of the IAB AdEx research 2008carried out by IAB Polska and PwC Polska16http://audyt.gemius.pl


E-mail marketing

E-mail marketing experienced another year ofdynamic growth which can be observed both inthe increasing number of marketing e-mails sentand the steady growth of this market value. In2008 total expenses on communication bymeans of electronic mail amounted in Poland toPLN 70.2 mln and was 58 percent bigger thanlast year17. This amount includes both revenuesof publishers from commissioned advertisinge-mails and increasing revenues of interactiveagencies and firms specializing in e-mailmarketing.

What is of importance is the fact that theyear 2008 in Poland was the year when thenumber of firms making use of e-mail marketingin their promotional activities exceeded thenumber of those which did not make use of thistool18. Data coming from the American market19

indicate that e-mail marketing will be, apart fromsearch engines and societies, the only marketingtool on which the expenses during the economicslowdown will increase. As far as the expenseson communication with customers of marketers’databases will increase, the expenses on e-mailsto be sent outside address bases may faceconsiderable reductions. However, it is hard topredict whether the situation will look similar inPoland.

What is importance is the fact that at theend of 2008 a considerable drop of non --commissioned e-mails (spam)20 was noted whichin November amounted to 66 percent. It wasconnected with the cut-off of the Americanhosting service provider – McColo from thenetwork, by means of this provider’s connectsa large number of unwanted messages used tobe sent. In the nearest future this situation willprobably return to the condition it was in at thebeginning of 2008, which means that during theyear the number of spam caught by filters of

receiving servers will amount to 45,000messages per a user21.

Newsletter communicationThe year 2008 must be ranked among very

successful ones as regards e-mail marketingactivities carried out in own databases. Theresearch shows22 that almost 9 out of 10respondents subscribe at least one newslettera week and at least half of them receives from 3 to5 newsletters a week. Also the awareness related

E-mail marketing

Planned changes within the expenses on particular marketing communication

Source: Marketing Sherpa, statistical survey “Marketing and the economy”, tx. 2008

-100 -80 -60 -40 -20 % 20 40 600 40 20 %

E-mailing to own address bases

Advertising insocial network services

Advertising insearch engines

Telemarketing

Display advertisingin Internet

Mobile marketing

Direct marketing

Events

E-mailing to externaladdress bases

Radio and televisionadvertising

Press advertising

48-14

48-20

27-33

18-22

16-43

13-20

12-52

8-57

6-83

6-43

4-60

decreaseincrease



to this form of communication has increasedamong both addressees and senders. According tothe research “Beyond the click: The indirect valueof e-mail” as many as 84 percent of respondentsenjoy receiving newsletters which they subscribedfor, though they do not always read them. Incomparison with the year 2005 when to the samequestioned was asked 69 percent of respondentsgave a positive answer; thus it is a very good result.The Polish research23 also confirms that themajority of respondents (74 percent) declare theirpositive or very positive attitude towardsnewsletters. Only 3 percent of respondents do notlike receiving them. It is no surprise therefore that59 percent of questioned enterprises declareintensification as regards the use of this form ofcommunication, whereas only 8 percent is going tomake use of it rarer or is not going to use it at all.

In accordance with the report “Retail e-mailyear-end trends for 2008” prepared in theUnited States by Smith-Harmon in 2008 wecould observe a steady growth of the number ofmessages sent to users. Most probably thesame situation concerns the Polish market, ofwhich the evidence is a growing demand forservices of agencies specialising in e-mailmarketing activities. According to the abovementioned report the most popular days forsending marketing e-mails in 2008 were exaequo Monday and Tuesday, Thursday came thesecond. These data differ from the results of theresearch carried out for the purpose of thisreport among Polish service providers. It can beconcluded from the analysis prepared by IABPolska that marketers consider Tuesday as thebest day for sending marketing mail, Wednesdayand Thursday come second. On the other handweekend is the least popular period to take thistype of actions.

What can be noticed when analyzing thebehaviour of newsletter addressees is a growingtendency as regards the number of newslettersreceived by users in comparison with theprevious year.24 In relation to also the structureof newsletters received has changed. Usersmost frequently receive: Internet journals,advertising newsletters and company news.Statistical data coming from providers of e-mailmarketing indicate that campaign receivers opencorrespondence on Wednesday and Friday most

willingly. At the same time Thursday is the daywhen users carry out the actions such asclicking a link placed in an e-mail.

E-mail sending offscommissioned by onlinepublishers

In 2008 expenses on advertising e-mailamounted in the USA to one third of outlays one-mail marketing. The participation of this formof advertising is going to increase slightly (byapprox. 3 percent) this year and will maintain thesame level in 201027. It is estimated that theparticipation of e-mail advertising in Poland in theexpenses on widely understood e-mail marketingis much larger than in the American market;however, in relation to constantly growingawareness of marketers and the increase ofoutlays on newsletter communication (directedto own bases) and base-data marketing theseproportions may change in the nearest future.

Despite the growing economic crisis, in thesecond half of last year in particular, expenseson e-mailing were not decreased considerably.Last year in the United States USD 472 mln(almost 9 mln less than it was forecasted) wasspent on this form of communication. In 2009a 5.7 percent drop of expenses on this objectiveis expected. In comparison with cutbacks onother forms of advertising newslettercommunication is going to face one of thesmallest planned reductions of marketingbudgets28.

For the needs of this report the contents ofe-mail boxes of Polish internauts were subject toanalysis. The accounts of the largest portals(Onet, WP, Gazeta, O2, Interia) were underobservation. This research29 showed that almostevery 5th e-mailing was commissioned by theenterprises from the financial sector (banks,

Structure of newsletters opening(expressed in %)

Sending offs Openings ClicksMonday 17.4 12.7 12.6Tuesday 24.2 17.4 18.7Wednesday 20.9 19.4 17.0Thursday 19.8 18.2 22.6Friday 14.8 25.2 16.7Saturday 1.7 4.6 7.1Sunday 1.1 2.6 5.3

Source: working group of e-mail marketing IAB Polska, own survey


E-mail marketing

insurance, pension plans). The first five of themost active branches included: e-commerce,education, FMCG and telecommunication. Themost seldom received e-mails came fromdevelopers, medical branch and clothing firms.The analysis of addressees’ mailboxes provedthat advertising e-mailing was mainly used insales campaigns, whereas in image campaigns orinformation campaigns was not used to such adegree as the creations of e-mailing withdistinct call-to-call action elements and thecontents reduced to two, three distinguishingfeatures of an offer prove.

In relation to high pressure exerted by thecustomers preferring settlement for results lotsof publishers decided to value also e-mails in CPAand CPL model (fee for an action or obtainedlead). The change of approach of the greatestplayers as regards the issue of the settlementmodel could be observed in the second half of theyear 2008 I particular. However, it did notinfluence much the level of prices calculated asCPM. It should be noted though that e-mailingprices were increased by 20 percent by one ofthe greatest players in the market, i.e. Onetexplaining this action with the increasing demandfor this type of advertising. Also the results ofe-mailing campaigns are on relatively high level incomparison with other forms of advertising.

ProspectsThe market value of e-mail marketing was

growing in 2008 in Poland at the rate of thewhole Internet advertising market. We estimatethat keeping this dynamics up will result in itsincrease in 2009 by 18 percent, to almost PLN83 mln. Although the most part of this amountis going to be still allocated on sending theadvertising e-mails off by online publishers, theparticipation of newsletter communication in

total expenses destined for e-mail marketing islikely to grow. It means the growing demand forservices of firms providing technological andconsulting services within this area andmaintaining prices on the hitherto level.

Although the prospects for e-mail marketingare very good, a few possible risks that all itsparticipants must face should be indicated. Thefirst one of them is the increasing number ofmessages received by addressees and therelated need of particular e-mails to be distincton the level of creation, contents and headlinesas well. What will be also of importance is thecare for correct display of messages in variouse-mail programs. Another issue that should bepaid attention to is the correct segmentationof an address base and behavioural targeting(related also to shopping done). As regards e--mail marketing actions taken in own databaseswhat will be of considerable importance involvestheir development (lead generation) as well asmaintaining relations with addressees obtainedthis way and holding them in the base(retention).

Average indicators of e-mail effectivenessto bases of online publishers in 2008(expressed in %)

Poland25 USA26

CTR 3.6 5.6OR 23.4 19.8Returns 11.0 6.0

Source: ARC, own survey, XII 2008

17IAB Polska estimation on the basis of the IAB AdEx 2008. Data asregards expenses on e-mail marketing were contributed by 26enterprises taking part in the research18Report of V research of e-mail usage. SARE 200819Datran Media, 3rd Annual Marketing & Media Survey, December 200820Spamcop21Google22SARE, Report from V research of e-mail usage, September 200823Report from V research of e-mail usage, SARE 200824SARE, Report from V research of e-mail usage, September 200825EMarketer, US E-mail Advertising vs. Marketing Spending, 2006-2011.June and September 2007.26eMarketer, Change In Marketing Budget Allocation In 2009 according toMarketers Worldwide, by Tactic, January 200927ACR, own survey, December 200828Averagized data of portal29Epsilon. Q3 2008 E-mail Trends and Benchmark, January 2009



Difficult first steps…Although it has been developing in Poland

since 2003, the market of mobile marketing stillwaits for achieving the large scale. Mobileservices, already popular among customers,push consequently their way to the awareness ofmarketers. It allows to look with optimism at thefuture despite so many barriers to be overcomeyet…

What happened in 2008 in the mobile market?At the beginning – a few facts.

Mobile telephony penetration (SIM cards) inPoland exceeded in the 4th quarter of 2008 thelevel of 115 percent30. 83 percent of Polesdeclare to have a mobile telephone, it is a muchlarger percent than in case of stationarytelephony (58.4 percent)31.

Still pre-paid phones enjoy the greatestpopularity though their number dropped slightlyin 2008 (approx. 55 percent of phone users inPoland are the customers of pre-paid phones)32.

Text messages keep on being the most popularform of communication – SMS-s are sent by93.7 percent of mobile phone users33 (77percent of all adults; 28 percent of all adultsused communicators and 38 percent e-mails34).A considerable percentage of users (41.3percent) sends MMS35– it is good news thatMMS-s are used more and more often inmarketing campaigns and projects, they are alsoused as the touch point of various media (WWW,journals) e.g. in services of citizen journalism.

The most important market growth factorsinclude the improvement of phone functionality(and what follows – the range of theirapplication) and the drop in prices caused by thecompetitiveness among operators, including thedrop in prices of pre-paid services enlarging themarket with customers with lower incomes.

Crucial growth factors are the need for mobilityrelated to a change of a lifestyle and a pressureof being mobile felt particularly by youngcustomers.

Mobile marketingThe equals sign put a few years ago between

mobile marketing and SMS advertising has lessand less support in practice. It is true thatSMS-s are (and will still be for a longer time) themost commonly used means in mobile marketing– as it also happened in 2008 (in salespromotion, loyal programs, competitions andlotteries).

Nevertheless, popularity is gained also by newsolutions like bluetooth, photo codes (2D codes),applications and localization services. Opennessof advertisers to new solutions is demonstratedby their seeking individualized methods ofreaching a user. Mobile marketing enablesmessage targeting, result measurement andhigh effectiveness (high response rate ofcustomer campaigns).

In 2008 mobile advertising appeared also inthe form of display advertising on “light” sites oflarge Internet portals and on portals of GSMoperators. A very attractive target group,innovativeness and also relatively high CTR ofmobile advertising allow to presume that therewill be more campaigns like this in 2009.

Bluetooth marketing stands extends POScommunication and outdoor with multimediacontents. It is possible to send video files,MP3, games, wallpapers or product cataloguesvia bluetooth. This solution enables advertisersto reach a target group in an innovative wayby using fully the potential of a mobile phoneas an immediate and direct communicationchannel.

Mobile marketing


Mobile marketing

In advertising campaigns in 2008 m-couponsappeared on a scale larger than ever before. One ofthe embodiments of m-coupons is SMS discountcode (prize) which gives a marketer a possibility ofelectronic distribution of prizes in contests andpromotions (e.g. m-coupons for Internet shops).This tool helps to optimize the costs of storageand distribution of prizes. And moreover, acustomer has a chance to choose a prize.

Last year photo codes (2D codes) were widelytalked about. Thanks to them it is possible toelicit fast action on a user’s phone (access toinformation, video/audio files, games, payments,WAP and webpages, initiation of aconnection/SMS etc.). Thus the potential ofapplications is enormous. In August 2008 PolishGSM operators officially announced theircommon standard – Data Matrix which they aregoing to promote jointly in the market. Suchcommon standard permits to look with optimismat the development of this service in Poland.What seems to be a problem nowadays is thecompatibility of the application to read photocodes with phones (at the end of 2008 theapplication was operated only by 20 percent ofmobile phones available in the market).

Mobile InternetThe technological development (3G, HSDPA,

HSUPA, Wi-Fi, WiMax) makes the Internet a trulymobile solution. Moreover, mobile Internet shouldnot be only associated with a mobile phone, butalso with other mobile devices (e.g. e-paperreaders, consoles). The year 2008 is also thephenomenon of iPhone. Users of this Appleproduct constituted, to tell the truth, sizeableminority in all markets where iPhone appeared,however, their participation in total Internetconsumption was significant. On the average it isestimated that 55 percent of the time wheniPhone was used was consumed on data transfer(25 percent on other devices). The appearance ofiPhone in the market induced other producers tointroduce phones with large touch screens well --adjusted to Internet use (e.g. BlackBerry Storm,G-phone with Android, Samsung Omnia N97).

The Polish market still lacks a standard formobile Internet testing. The most popular so --called “light” sites are especially adjustedservices of the largest portals: Lajt.onet.pl,

M.WP.pl, Gazeta.mobi, Interia.mobi, neverthelessno precise statistics related to these servicesand the market as the whole are known. The firstfive most popular “light” websites in Opera Minisearch engine include: Nasza-klasa.pl, Google.pl,Lajt.onet.pl, Allegro.pl, Wikipedia.org, and theincrease of hits in this search engine fromJanuary to November 2008 amounted to 200percent36. The estimated participation of non --voice services in ARPU (average revenue peruser) in Poland amounts to approx. 20 percent.

The increase of broad band Internet range oncomputers resulted in the appearance of thephenomenon of Web 2.0. Mobile telephony awaitsa similar catalyst. The coincidence of a fewfactors such as: technological progress, costdecrease (lump sum), awareness of users andunderstanding their needs by service providerswill bring a rapid acceleration.

Mobile TVAnother step within the development of video

format will involve mobile television i.e. broadcastof a television program to mobile devices. Incomparison with traditional television mobiletelevision will ensure greater personalization andinteraction (voting, polling, betting results duringprograms). It is expected that all over the worldthe number of mobile television users willincrease from 12 to 120-200 mln during thenext five years.37

The frequency competition for the purpose ofrunning a multiplex in DVB-H technology wasannounced by UKE president on October 10,2008. In compliance with the competitiondocumentation a mobile television service is tobe launched in Poland in 2009. Probably at theend of the year there will be not more than100,000 service users, but already in 2010there may be about 1 mln of them.

Obviously this forecast may come trueprovided that some conditions like a moderateservice price and introduction of functional andcheap telephones into the market are met. Theavailability of attractive contents and, what ismore, presented differently than in case oftraditional television (attracting attention ofa user on the move will be quite a challengeitself) will be equally important for the popularityof mobile television.



What is the prognosisregarding mobile marketingdevelopment in Poland?

To put short – optimistic. Both as regards theshort-term and long-term perspective. Mobileservices are bound to be more and morecommon. Consequently marketers seeking new,non-standard and effective forms of customergainning will reach for the arsenal of mobilemarketing tools more courageously.

Glossary:IVR (Interactive Voice Response)

– a service based on voice communication andtransmitting tone signals from a phone keyboard.Voice messages prepared beforehand aretransmitted by a specially designed computerdepending on a subscriber’s commands and thesolution assumptions. The solution is used forthe purpose of, among others, processautomatization of so-called customer service.

GPRS (General Packet Radio Service)– a packet service of data exchange via GSMnetworks. In practice, it enables to receive andsend information for WAP or MMS needs quickly.In connection with the fact that a subscribermaking use of GPRS pays for the amount oftransmitted data and not for the GPRSconnection time this service is called a cordlesspermanent connection.

Photo codes (2D codes) – matrix codes, beingthe successors of bar codes, offer a possibilityof coding on a small area a bigger amount ofinformation suitable for automatic read-out.2D codes ensure fast information downloadingon phone, payment making, access to services,WAP sites and webpages, a connection/SMSinitiation etc.

M-coupon – special or discount offer, in theform of SMS that is sent on a customer’sphone. It contains a unique code being theidentifier of a discount that is verified in a pointof sale by means of m-terminals or onlineapplications.

Robert Stalmach, Agora SA:The market develops very fast. Not long

ago mobile marketing did not exceed beyondsimple SMS actions. Nowadays it often takesthe form of complex projects linking variousmedia where such solutions as bluetooth,2D codes, GPS and applications are used.Big hopes can be put on mobile television andmobile games (advergaming).

Growing needs of marketers are notpresently reflected in the organization of themobile advertising market. The owners of thebig brands expect common standards(formats, efficiency measurement).

The key factor in mobile Internetconsumption growth in the nearest future isthe increase in the smartphone share in totalsale of telephones. At present there areabout 3 mln smartphones in Poland, of whichthe largest group is the group of telephoneswith Symbian software – approx. 60 percent.

Agata Kozak, MobiJoy!:Mobile marketing in 2009 and in

consecutive years has a chance to win moreappreciation in the awareness of marketers– despite the crisis it is assumed that themarket will grow steadily offering to theadvertising branch new solutions enrichedwith innovatory, yet still efficient andeffective, functionalities. The brands thatperceive mobiles as something more thanSMS-s have quite a chance to be successful.We believe that marketing communicationenriched with mobiles will become a standardin the market in some years.

30http://www.efi24.com/info?itemld=75251&rob=Rosnie-penertacja-w-telefonii-komorkowej&j=pl 31Telecommunication market in Poland in 2008, individual customers, CBMIndicator for UKE, Warszawa, December 200832Polish SIM card market after 2008http://www.telepolis.pl/news.php?id=14112 33Telecommunication market in Poland in 2008, individual customers, CBMIndicator for UKE, Warszawa, December 200834Poles in the network, CBOS report, April 200835Telecommunication market in Poland in 2008, individual customers, CBMIndicator for UKE, Warszawa, December 200836Opera: State of Mobile Web, November 200837Juniper, Informa telecoms & media


Advertising in games is still in most cases,unfortunately, treated as the actions directedtowards the youngest customers. Fortunatelymore and more marketers have noticed alreadygreater possibilities of advertising actions ingames to be used in Poland as well as adeveloping group of experienced players aware oftheir choices who play games for pleasure.Appearing advertising campaigns and newproducts designed for payers destroy the out-of--date stereotypes illustrating players asweirdoes, mainly males living their life only to playcomputer games, taking care neither for theirpersonal hygiene, nor for their relationships withthe nearest surrounding, friends or family. Newproducts in the Polish market, related to consolegames in particular, designed for players, clearlyshow the way to the new vision of a Polish player,how he is perceived by aware marketers andequipment producers. This new vision of a playeris the image of a person who perceives playinggames as conscious entertainment (such personprefers paying similar amount of money fora game to going to the cinema, comparing theprice to the time of entertainment he mayreceive in return), shares it with his family andfriends (hence the tendency to change a place ofplaying games, i.e. it is no longer a bedroom witha computer, but a living room with a consoleconnected to the TV set equipped with HDscreen where one may as well play with theyoungest members of the family or fish witha grandpa by means of a Wii console), plays forpleasure (giving priority to playing games overe.g. watching TV, surfing Internet, reading books,going to the cinema or the theatre)38, likesadvertising in games and even expects it whichcan be concluded from previous experiences withother media. A new player is simply a perfectreceiver of advertising, not only is he able to do

shopping being under its influence, but also evenrequires that advertising of interesting brandsget to him by a well-selected advertisingmessage.

There are relatively few researches andsurveys carried out in Poland as regards playersas well as the subjects related to players asadvertising receivers. However, relying on availablesources related to the Polish market andreferring to the research of Western markets, itcan be safely said that the situation looks quitegood, even very good, with both Polish gameplaying and Polish players. The players playing oncomputer games, console games or online gamesconstitute over 16 percent of population over 15years of age39. The majority of this group, i.e. over50 percent, are the persons aged 15-2440,whereas in the US the dominating group are thepersons between 18 and 3441 years of age andthe average age of a player is 3242. This groupstatistically grows old as it bases on the personswho began their adventure with games in the90’s; however, thanks to new game interfaces(Wii console with Wii Fit bundle, guitar with GuitarHero or a microphone with SingStar) theyintroduce to the world of computer games thepersons who even used to be against playing

Advertising in games

Advertising market value in games in the USA

Source: eMarketer.

mlnUSD

200 400 600 800 1,000

2006

2007

2008

2009

346

502

665

829

Advergaming – Advertising in Games



computer games. The tendency of acceleratedaging of the society of players caused by the eldergeneration joining this group is noticeable in thedivision of players into the steady ones (playing forover two years) and new ones (playing shorterthan two years). New players constitute a largergroup among the persons aged 45-54(20 percent vs. 17 percent) and the ones aged25-34 (27 percent vs. 22 percent) than amongthe steady ones. When referring to the age ofplayers we should return to the subject relatedto availability of games and computer gameplaying, as the average age of a player is relatedto the fact that this form of entertainment isdedicated to young persons. The average age ofplayers results mainly from fact that computergames are a relatively young phenomenon, justlike e.g. Internet and just like in case of Internetthis average will systematically increase alongwith the first generation of players growing old.Only presently we deal with the generation thatwas born in the new world, the world of Internetand games. Players are mostly males, theyconstitute about 59 percent of the wholepopulation of players43. However, the personsplaying games are a very good target group aswhen comparing them with the rest of thepopulation we will realize that they are wealthierand dominate in the groups earning net overPLN 2,000 per person in a household.44 They arealso better market educated and more proneto advertising which influences their shoppingbehaviours.

A wider look at players as the target group ofmarketing actions by the persons deciding aboutadvertising expenses of companies is not onlythe wider range measured in the increasing ageof a receivers, but also a considerable increasein the number and quality of available tools withinthe field of computer games, and even withina few fields: advergame, static in-game, dynamicin-game, as this is the division of advertisingpossibilities when using computer games.

Advergames are dedicated productions thatare realized directly for an advertiser or a groupof advertisers. These productions are most oftenaimed at younger audience, however, it may bealready noticed that there are also interestingsolutions dedicated to other target groups. Aperfect example of this may be a German

Incomes of players against the population

Source: Millward Brown SMG/KRC TGI/Net Crack

% 2 4 6 8 10 12

Up to PLN 200

PLN 201-400

PLN 401-600

PLN 601-800

PLN 801-1000

PLN 1001-1200

PLN 1201-1400

PLN 1401-1600

PLN 1601-1800

PLN 1801-2000

PLN 2001-2500

PLN 2501-3000

PLN 3001-5000

PLN 5001-…

0.140.220.390.67

1.112.53

1.643.66

4.166.53

2.414.04

4.295.84

5.397.04

4.966.25

9.279.25

8.497.88

10.778.88

9.777.24

2.751.88

populationplayers

production that is also available on the Polishmarket – “BMW M3 Challenge” – a game wherecommercials not only of BMW but also ofproducts related to motorization (e.g. Castroloils) appear. This game distribution was supportedby WoM actions which simultaneously made itpossible to check both the internaut reaction tothis game as well as the perception of BMWbrand in relation to the game itself. The resultsof buzz marketing were great, over 75 percentof players estimated BMW brand positively,21 percent – neutrally and only 4 percent of themhad negative attitude towards the brand.45

Static in-game is based on placing in anexisting production a static advertising (e.g.billboard, balloon with a logo) or a product(product placement variety). Such actions are


presently seldom made use of in Poland due tothe necessity of cooperation between advertisersor advertising agencies and game producers. Theproductions of brands present in Poland and ingames available on the Polish market are basedmainly on foreign tiles and global advertisingcontracts (e.g.: Diesel, Burger King and Gillette,in “Burnout: Paradise City”) and the productionsof Polish publishers leave much to be desired.Quite a breakthrough can be achieved by thetitles that are to appear in the middle of 2009and that are mainly connected with brands andproducts designed for males and drivers.

Dynamic in-game is the field in case of whichthe year 2008 brought the greatest positivechanges. The development of technologies ofadvertising provision by the American advertisingnetwork IGA Worldwide as well as noticingthe potential of the Polish market allowed tocommence cooperation with a localrepresentative. In-game ads is the advertisingthat make dynamic presentation of ads in gameson PC-s and consoles connected to Internetpossible. Ads are displayed in places indicated bya game producer and an advertising network,whereas their transmission of their displaycountdown is carried out by means of anadvertising format server. Thanks to such use oftechnology taken from Internet advertising andcombined with the experience of game producernon-invasive dynamic advertising carriers cameinto being. This new form of advertising is madeuse of in Poland by the brands like: BMW, 36,6or Vichy.

The final element increasing the range ofplayers as a target group is both popularizationof game platforms and increase in their capacity.The platforms that can be presently successfullyused for game playing include personalcomputers, consoles and mobile phones.

Playing on a home PC does not only stand forplaying installed games, but also – or maybemost of all – online games available via a searchengine. Online games apart from entertainmentin case of productions made in flash technology(range of the largest service with the games ofthis type in Poland – Gry.pl – reaches over 3 mlnunique users a month) offer also a contest basedon strategic games with community elementsMMO (Massive Multiplayer Online, e.g.Plemiona.pl or OGame).

Stationary and mobile consoles are not onlya source of fun connected with games but alsoa home multimedia entertainment centre bymeans of which a film can be watched in Blu-ray(e.g. PlayStation 3), a movie can be rented online(Xbox 360 from Netfix), Internet can be surfedon, high quality music can be listened to. It isthis various, multimedia usage that makes itpossible to replace a DVD player that hadeliminated video players from our living roomswith new toys for big boys and girls, i.e. withhigh efficiency consoles. The sale of consolesin Poland has increased, Sony PlayStationdominates, it achieved in 2008 the sale onthe level of over 57,000 items. The presentgreatest competitor of Sony – Microsoft– treads on its heels steadily increasing therange of Xbox 360 what is however surprisingis the low sale level of Wii console thatdominates in the world with the number of solddevices (49 mln) in comparison with Xbox(29.68 mln) and PS3 (21.6 mln).46

Mobile phones that according to statisticsconstitute the most often used tool ofentertainment in every Polish home have becomealso the most frequently used platform todistribute free games – both in the filed ofclassic advergaming and by distribution of gamesin the advertising model. The first solution isrelated to an advertiser providing a freeadvergame, the other one requires a user towatch ads before playing a production madeavailable for free by an advertising network (e.g.Mobiads.pl).

Games in all their variety on all platforms stillare not a fully used marketing mix tool in Poland,however, the actions of Polish advergamingagencies may change this situation diametricallyin the years 2009-2011.

38Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association39Millward Brown SMG/KRC TGI/Net Crack40Millward Brown SMG/KRC TGI/Net Crack41ESA & IGN’s 200842ESA & IGN’s 200843Millward Brown SMG/KRC TGI/Net Crack44Millward Brown SMG/KRC TGI/Net Crack45Jogo Media 200845VG Chartz

Advergaming – Advertising in Games



„(...) opi nion -Ie ading 10 percent of any tar get mar ket de ter mi ne what the other 90 percent think, buy and do (...)”

Mars den (Lon don Scho ol of Eco no mics)

Word of mouth marketing is the tool thatin 2008 created furore in Internet and enjoyeda huge dynamics of growth of orders of this typeof services. Due to its increasing importance itappears in the report for the first time.

In what way is Internet used in WoM actions?What is word of mouth marketing in the Polishnetwork?

To put it shortly, word of mouth marketingstands for exerting influence on customers byidentifying and effecting on environment opinionleaders and trendsetters. WoM makes use ofthe power of the net of relationships andinteractions for advertising purposes. Internetsmoothed greatly both identification andrecruitment, as well as two-way communicationwith opinion leaders and evangelists (see:subchapter “For whom WoM”).

What is WoM in the netWoM acts on the basis of a personal

recommendation. Opinion leaders, i.e. speciallyselected persons taking part in a word of mouthcampaign pass to one another informationabout a brand from mouth to mouth, froma communicator to a communicator, froma person leaving a post to the one reading it ona forum. The psychological basis that is used insuch campaigns, is the so-called Hawthorne’seffect that says if we tell a selected group ofpersons that they are very important for abrand, a product or an idea and make them

aware that they are experts, they will engagethemselves in it regardless of the remuneration.And it is like this in fact, they are very importantto brands regardless of their participation ina WoM campaign as it is up to opinion leaders toa large degree if a brand is a success ora failure. It refers in particular to these brandswhose recommendations customers seek inInternet. I word to mouth marketing we builda strong relationship with a brand customer.We base on that assumption that the personswill feel appreciated and important and then wedo not have to pay them. We create websiteswhere they communicate with other leaderstaking part in a campaign and this way they knowthey are a part of a larger entirety. Although wedo not pay to opinion leaders used in campaigns,such cooperation model is based on gadget orproduct distribution and most of all on beinginformed about some ideas earlier and batterthan others.

ToolsThe primary tools that word to mouth

marketing makes use are as follow:– viral;– buzz;– recommendation marketing;– ambassador programs;– cooperation with opinion leaders, bloggers.

Word to mouth marketing determines thecontents of communication, enables to use thecredibility of a person passing a recommendation aswell as to reach a target group cheaply and to makea product an important conversation topic. WoMmarketing is the technique of inducing social buzz bymeans of small means by preparing an attractivemessage or wisely designed MgM mechanism. Oneof the channels of information passing to

Word of mouth marketing


customers is the channel based on a personalrecommendation. Word to mouth marketing makesuse of lots of communication channels – by a gossippassed on personally, virus advertising camping aswell as the actions within Internet amplifying, publicrelations or partisan marketing. Briefly speakinga well-constructed WoM campaigns resemblesa crossmedia campaign.

For whom WoMAlong with the development of marketing

techniques WoM has no longer been perceived asa tool to reach young target groups, party--goers, school youth. WoM is an effectivesolution in case of advertising campaigns ofproducts designed for a wide spectrum of targetgroups. WoM seems to work perfect in case ofe.g. brands designed for the mother withchildren segment, household appliances andaudio/video devices as well as financial services.

On some level of generalization we may saythat a product that is perfect for WoMmarketing should meet the following conditions:

– be objectively good;– has a large potential of carrierness

– virusness;– be complicated of indicative of us;– be a novelty/innovation.Media houses in Poland include WoM in

mediaplans of a large part of FMCG campaignsconducted in Internet as cheap and at the sametime effective support to standard actions.

WoM actions can be divided in two groups:– Ad hoc projects – word to mouth marketing

ensures support within a propagation of a catchymarketing idea on which an integratedadvertising campaign is based or buzz marketingcontent propagated by means of appropriatelyselected communication channel is created.

– Permanent projects – word to mouthmarketing in a permanent way creates a brandimage, improves its perception by conductingplanned actions based on the net of the spreadthe word about a brand.

EthicsA skilfully conducted word to mouth campaign

is ethical and in compliance with the Polish law in

100 percent. When conducting WoM campaignswe rely on directives prepared by the Word ofMouth Marketing Association that in short canbe presented in three main assumptions:honesty, identity, openness. It means that theopinion leaders taking part in a word to mouthcampaign always admit that they take part ina marketing campaign, spread only their ownopinions and do not falsify their identity.

At the beginning of 2008 renowned agenciesassociated in the working group of word tomouth marketing at IAB started to work overthe code of online word of mouth marketingethics which is to regulate the actions withinWoM in Poland.

SummaryA skilful and non aggressive request to test

a product and share opinions related to it withother customers is going to result in crossingthe barrier that has hitherto been considereduncrossable by some brands – it is thecustomers who share information about it, passopinions and ideas that so far has reached themonly by classic channels of communication. Thisway word to mouth marketing helps to rebuildcustomer’s trust in advertising.

Word of mouth marketing



Pop-up (pop-under)Pop-up or pop-down ads are permissible.

However, in some situation using them can bequalified as an act of unfair competition defined inart. 16 par. 1 point 5 of the Act on CombatingUnfair Competition. This regulation finds an adarduous should such ad “constitute significantinterference in the sphere of privacy, in particularby abusing technical mass media”. According tothe explanations of the Chairman of UOKiK thedishonest advertising includes these pop-ups andother similar sort of ads “in which the cross fieldis inactive or runs away from the cursor or doesnot have a closing field at all or its closing fieldappears only after a dozen of seconds or it isa sound one, often very laud”.

Web positioning – SEOPositioning or optimization of websites is the

adjustment of the contents and code of websitesso that the service could be more visible(recognized better) in search engines. Theseactions are permitted, however, some SEOmethods can infringe the law, in particular theregulations of the Act on Combating UnfairCompetition.

Internet service creators place key words theywant their services to be associated with (so --called meta tags) in the headlines of websites.Optimization of a website code in this case relieson proper selection of key words. Legalcontroversies thus appear when a third’s partytrade mark (e.g. “playboy”) is used as a key word.The actions of this sort, i.e. the ones that lureinternauts into their website, can be treated as anact of unfair competition defined in art. 3 par. 1of the Act on Combating Unfair Competition(“contrary to good manners”). In some cases theymay also consist an act of unfair competition is anad is misleading (art. 16 par. 1 point 2 of the Acton Combating Unfair Competition). This sortof attitude has been confirmed in the decisionsof Polish courts.

Whereas in case of website contentsoptimization the primary principle of distinguishingbetween White hat SEO and Black hat SEO,

spamdexing is the principle according to which thewebsite contents, which are indexed by searchengine systems, is the same as the websitecontents with which an internaut entering a givenwebsite visits familiarizes with. In relation to theabove the unfair actions involve various methods ofhiding key words e.g. by using a text in the color ofthe background, placing it on an invisible elementor in the place that is usually not looked at bya user or finally a dirty business defined ascloaking, i.e. of building a website, especiallyprepared for the search engine systems, that isdifferent from the one that is visible to internauts.In the last case a user is redirected to thewebsite other than the website which appeared insearch results. If it is stated that anotherentrepreneur uses this sort of unfair methods ofweb positioning there are grounds to find them tobe an act of unfair competition within the meaningof art.3 par. 1 of the Act on Combating UnfairCompetition.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)Two groups of legal issues are related to

sponsored links. Firstly sponsored links must beabsolutely distinguished from ordinary linksappearing as natural search results. Secondly,what evokes controversies is the legal estimationof a contextual ad. Making use of a contextual adis permissible indisputably in the situation when anadvertiser uses generic names of goods orservices (e.g. skis) as key words. Whereas legalcontroversies are induced by using thedesignations third parties have legal rights to (e.g.third party’s trade mark). Presently there is noPolish jurisdiction as regards this subject. Thusdecisions of Polish courts related to Google caseswill be surely influenced by verdicts of the Court ofJustice of the European Communities. They areexpected to be pronounced in 2010.

E-mailingThe rules of conducting e-mail advertising are

included in art. 10 of the Act on providing servicesvia electronic communication networks introducingthe so-call spam prohibition. According to this

Appendix:Internet advertising and law– selected issues


Appendix: Reklama internetowa a prawo – wybrane zagadnienia

regulation sending so-called commercialinformation by the means of electroniccommunication (e.g. e-mailing, SMS, MMS) ispermissible if an addressee of such communicationagrees to that a priori. The concept of“commercial information” covers various forms ofcommercial advertising (e.g. company newsletter),what it, however, does not cover is the actionswithin social advertising (e.g. e-mailing promotinga political party or a confessional association).

The spam prohibition covers not only sendingadvertising materials to natural persons but alsoto legal persons or economic entities not havinglegal personality (e.g. civil partnerships). It wouldbe impermissible to send unordered commercialinformation to the following address:[email protected].

According to the Act commercial information isconsidered to be ordered if an addressee gives hisconsent to receive materials of this sort.A consent cannot be assumed to be given just onthe grounds of putting one’s e-mail address inInternet. Thus it would be in violation of the Act touse addresses collected on various public forums(e.g. discussion lists) for advertising purposes,unless their disposers gave their explicit consentfor e-mailing.

The infringement of the spam prohibition mayresult in civil and legal sanctions. In the first casean e-mailing addressee may claim thedetermination of the infringement of his personalrights and compensation. In practice the amountsawarded by courts do not exceed PLN 10,000.Sending unordered commercial information is alsoan offence that is liable to affine. Its upper limit isPLN 5,000 regardless of the number of e-mailssent.

When this report is being drawn anadministrative sanction for spams is planned to beintroduced within the amendment oftelecommunication law. According to the billprepared by the Ministry of Infrastructure thepresident of the Electronic Communication Office(UKE) is to have the right to impose a fineamounting to PLN 100,000.

Viral marketingUsing viral marketing techniques is permissible.

In case of the action consisting in switching e.g.advertising films by users the art. 3 par 2 of Acton providing services via electronic communicationnetworks shall be applicable in particular.According to this regulation sending messagesamong natural persons is not subject to the Act,including the regulations of spam prohibition.Consequently natural persons may send to oneanother message promoting goods or services of

other entrepreneurs not having to obtain consentof the addressees of such messages. The sendersof such messages are not allowed, however, toreceive any benefits from the entity whose imageor goods/services are promoted this way. It doesnot refer only to direct benefits (e.g.remuneration), but also to indirect benefits (e.g.additional facilities when making use of serviceadministrator’s services).

Viral marketing may also consist in encouragingusers to inform consciously their acquaintancesabout a given product or service. The methodsthat are used for it include placing proper scriptsin Internet services. The entities making use ofthis technique of viral marketing should follow theguidelines below so as to eliminate a legal riskconnected with this sort of actions. Firstly, itis impermissible to enclose advertising materialsother than the materials recommended bya sender of a given message. Secondly, a systemshould be built in such a way that a messagesender had to give his first name and surnameas well as his e-mail address. This condition is tosmooth possible complaint filing by an addresseein the situation when he does not know the senderand he has not given his consent to receive thissort of messages from such sender. Thirdly, itwould be impermissible for a service administratorto keep addresses of message receivers withoutobtaining their explicit consent for this action (andpossible further usage of these addressees formarketing purposes).

Word of mouth marketingThe essence of word to mouth marketing (buzz

marketing) is the use of the influence of variouspersons on decisions concerning a purchase beingmade by other persons. These opinions may beexpressed by so-called leaders, experts and evenordinary customers. The situation when thesepersons encourage to buy a given product or servicefor the sake of remuneration they receive from anadvertiser is prohibited as the addressees of suchmessages are convinced that these opinions areneutral. A classic example of such impermissiblesituation includes seemingly neutral entries ondiscussion forums (so-called comments). This sortof actions constitutes an act of unfair competitiondescribed in art.16 par. 1 point 4 of the Act onCombating Unfair Competition (so-called hidden ad).According to this regulation “the act of unfaircompetition within advertising is a statement thatencouraging to buy goods or services seems to bea neutral message”. Such actions may also beconsidered an unfair market practice the art. 7point 22 of the Act of counteracting unfair marketpractices refers to.


Internet 2008: Electronic trading

The revenues of the classifieds and yellowpages sector in 2008 amounted to approx.PLN 226.1 mln47 and in comparison with theyear 2007 they increased by 43 percent. Thisgrowth is smaller than the general increase ofthe whole advertising spending in Internet (57percent). It may be caused by two reasons.Most of all, this sector is relatively mature anddeveloped. In comparison with the steadilyincreasing number of entities competing activelyfor revenues from display advertising new strongplayers in the classifieds and yellow pagesmarket are much less numerous and they oftenenter the market with a free model or muchcheaper offer than of competitors. As a resultthe increase of revenues in this sector dependsmainly on the dynamics of revenues increase ofthe largest websites.

The other reason is the large dependence ofthis category of internet advertising on the

Chapter 3

Electronic trading

Classifieds and yellow pages

general economic situation. The boom in the realestate market in Poland in the first half of 2008brought the increase in classified revenues andalso let the new players gain some market share.A rapid change of macroeconomic situation atthe end of the year resulted in the slow down ofthis trend. Additionally, it moderated theexpenses of firms from other sectors ofeconomy. As regards the whole year 2008 theinfluence of this slow down is not visible yet, butit will presumably count much more on thisyear’s revenues.

In the United States which as the first oneexperienced painfully effects of the economiccrises, the revenues of the classifieds sectoralready in the first half of 2008 dropped by 5.2percent in comparison with the correspondingperiod of the year 2007 (from USD 1 billion 699mln to USD 1 billion 611 mln).48 The whole year2008 was closed with even bigger 9.5 percent

Number of classified ads on websites in the Real Estates category in 2008

Gratka Domiporta Oferty.net

GazetaDom OtoDom

0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000


Source: Own data, Trader.com Polska


Classifieds and yellow pages

drop (from USD 3 billion 321 mln to USD 3 billion174 mln).49

In relation to the Polish online classifiedsmarket it is worth paying attention to theconsolidation trend. Finally in 2008 the group ofleading Internet publishers active in all mostimportant thematic categories of classified ads(jobs, real estate, cars) came into being. ExceptGratka belonging to Polskapresse this groupincludes Agora strengthened by the purchase ofTrader.com (among others: GazetaPraca,GazetaDom, Domiporta, Autotrader), AllegroGroup (OtoMoto, OtoDom, AllePraca,AlleWakacje) and the group Pracuj.pl. It is tothese four publishers that the majority ofclassified revenues goes to. What is also worthnoticing is the increasing activity of O2 (NajAutoand NajDom) which has chosen though anotherbusiness model, i.e. ad placement both byprivate persons and companies for free.

Three largest horizontal portals (Onet, WP,Interia) do not pursue their own sales activitywithin classified advertising. Each of them,however, has a classified section within theportal website. They are run in cooperation withthe above mentioned classified publishers who

are content providers. This popular model ofpartnership is beneficial to both parties. Itincreases the reach of classified ads and, whatfollows, their effectiveness (i.e. the number ofgenerated leads). It increases also the reach andadvertising space of a portal.

JobsIn 2008 over 1,304,000 recruitment postings

were published, which stands for a drop by almost100,000 in comparison with 2007. Over 48,000employers seeking employees were registered in thejob websites. The largest number of employerssought employees in the following regions: Masovian(over 27 percent of all employment offers), Silesianand Wielkopolska. The largest number ofemployment offers in 2008 (over 580,000,43 percent of the total number) were directed tospecialists without higher education.50

Real estateProsperity in the real estate market in Poland

in 2008 resulted in the increase in advertisingactivity of real estate agencies and primarymarket developers. And thus both the traffic andnumber of offers on classified websitesincreased during this year.

Number of classified ads on websites in the Cars category in 2008

OtoMoto Gratka Autotrader NajAuto

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

350,000

400,000


Source: Own data, Trader.com Polska


Internet 2008: Electronic Trading

As far as this category in concerned, thepress advertising is still important for clients.Although it does not bring such a direct salesresult as Internet does it is perceived as thebest tool to build an image and a brand,particularly by the primary market developers. Itrelates only, however, to display advertising.Budgets for classified advertising are alreadymostly spent on Internet that is cheaper, hasincomparably wider reach and provides moresales contacts.

CarsIn the promotion of sales of new vehicles

Internet gains more and more importance, butstill it is rather a complementary communicationchannel. Whereas trading of second-hand carsalmost totally moved from a car markets andclassified press to Internet. It is interesting thatclassified websites from this category not onlyfulfil the transaction function, but also aninformative one. It is the best source ofinformation about current prices and popularityof defined models and makes. OtoMoto, theunquestioned leader in this category, is at thesame time the most popular automotive websitein Poland. It has the highest numbers of usersnot only among other classified websites butalso the informative ones.

Yellow pagesYellow pages, presently more often called

“local search engines” is the collection ofinformation about companies, products andservices available in a free of charge paper(offline) and electronic (online) form. The primaryfeature of yellow pages is the conjunction ofpurchasers and sellers. The presentation ofa company offer on yellow pages is subject topayment depending on its format. Maincustomers of yellow pages include firms of SmallBusiness sector for which advertising in acatalogue or a tele-address search engine theonly way to present their offer. However, yellowpages seem to be also an attractive advertisingmedium for large business entities thatappreciate them for a user profile– persons/companies seeking products/services,interested in the purchase.51

During the last few years the yellow pagesbranch puts the main emphasis on onlineactivities and it is also the development directionset by users who migrate from printed media toInternet. Because of the growing potential ofthis segment not only traditional leaders act onthe market (“Panorama Firm”, “Polskie KsiążkiTelefoniczne”), but also new players like Onet(Zumi.pl) and WP (Docelu.pl) strive to win theirshare in this branch, e.g.). Due to the dynamicdevelopment of mapping services geolocationalservices became an inseparable element ofyellow pages.

The most frequently sought entries are tightlyconnected with the market trends. There aresearching categories like banks, cashpoints,restaurants or hotels, whose popularity doesnot decrease all year long. In case of somebranches, like tourism or education theirseasonality can be observed.

“Yellow advertising market”, wanting to keepup with internauts’ needs, will invest in qualityimprovement and contents amount increase aswell as the development of advertising forms,paying particular attention to search enginemarketing (SEM). More specialized productsfluffing needs of narrowly defined target groups(verticalization), new forms of distribution(mobile devices) and services as well asspecialist verticals for particular branches,services or products are bound to appear.

47IAB Polska estimation on the basis of the IAB AdEx research 2008conducted by IAB Polska and PwC Polska48Interactive ADvertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers(PwC), „IAB Internet Advertising Report: 2008 Full-Year Results”, March30, 200949Interactive ADvertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers(PwC), „IAB Internet Advertising Report: 2008 Full-Year Results”, March30, 200950Expert Report „Recruitment in Polish Internet”, GazetaPraca.pl, April200851PRO MilwardBrown SMG KRC research, April 2008

Auctions and e-commerce


In 2008 Poles spent over PLN 11.01 billion ononline shopping which constitutes 36.4 percentgrowth in comparison with the previous year.The share of transaction realized by means ofinternet auctions (CtoC, BtoC) increased byabout 1.9 percent to the level of 58.86 percentof sales value (PLN 6.480 billion). Ipso facto viainternet shops (BtoC) as much as 41.14 percentof money i.e. PLN 4.53 billion was spent ononline shopping.

For a few months in 2008 due to the strongPolish zloty the number of purchases madeabroad increased considerably. For Poland thisaverage amounts to about 2 percent52, for 25countries of Europe – 7 percent, for 15countries of the European Union – 9 percent. Inthe period from March to September 2008 this

value could have been even three times bigger.It created a market niche where agencies quicklyappeared (if in a given country to realize an orderone needed a local correspondence address).This situation related mainly to the USA wheremore expensive electronic equipment (e.g.computers, photo cameras) was bought mostwillingly.

We also have to remember about the influenceinternet exerts on purchases made outside thenet. Over 90 percent of Polish internautsdeclare to use internet as support of theirpurchasing decisions.53 At the same time only66 percent of net users54 declare that they haveever made any purchase there. What is more theaverage of transaction value in such schema(online searching, offline shopping) is much higherthan in other behaviour variants. Also thespecific character of branches is of importance,i.e. the more expensive the product, the morefrequent the occurrence of this type ofcustomer behaviour model55. The value ofproducts bought under the influence of internetbut outside it amounted in 2008 to about PLN17 billion (in 2007 about PLN 9 billion, increaseby 89 percent). The effect of searching ininternet and purchasing outside will growstronger (growth dynamics is stronger thaninternet trading itself) which is confirmed byexperience of more developed countries (e.g.:Great Britain, Germany, France).

The estimates include solely the turnover ofgoods, excluding the sector of services. In caseof the majority of services the penetration ofcustomer service channels (online and offline) isstronger, sometimes even indispensable toconclude a deal, that is why it is difficult tocategorize properly this sort of sales. Thebranch that is relatively well monitored is onlinetourism whose value (Poles’ expenses) in 2008 is

Polish e-commerce market value

Source: SMB “Polish e-commerce market”

mlnPLN

2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

4860152180328410

980921

1,3001,800

2,0003,000

3,4704,6004,530

6,480

auction platformsinternet shops




estimated to reach about PLN 850 mln(including package tours – PLN 300 mln, airplanetickets – PLN 300-350 mln, others includinghotel booking, insurance, car rental etc.). Theseestimates relate to sales via internet, withoutsales by stationary customer service centres,which some internet players have. Let’sremember that some tourist agencies selltourist services of a few categories (e.g. tripsand tickets). It should be emphasised that theeffect of net searching and of outside buying maybe even stronger than in case of goods,products.

Evaluating e-commerce share in total retailtrade (large discrepancies between branches) isvery difficult without a detailed calculation ofexpenses in particular branch categories. Takinginto consideration the whole retail sales acc. toGUS (Central Statistical Office) we receive about1.91 percent share of e-commerce in trading(note – a considerable share of retail salebelongs to food articles whose share in internetis still rather small). By means of the analoguesmethod of share evaluation we receive thefollowing results as regards the year 2007:1.55 percent of e-commerce in total retail tradewhich stands for 22.4 percent increase.

This growth is not surprising if we comparepercent growth of turnovers of traditional trade.The retail sale in 2008 grew on the average by13 percent56. The e-commerce noted turnoverslarger by 36.43 percent year in, year out.

Let us compare now an almost 2 percentshare of e-commerce in retail sale to thesituation in Great Britain considered as themost developed European e-market. A similarevaluation method (comparison with total retailsale) applied by Verdit Research estimatede-commerce share in the whole trade in 2007 toreach 5.2 percent. Obviously we need to takecrucial differences, e.g. society wealth andparameters of internet traffic (penetration,price, throughput) into consideration.Nevertheless e-commerce in Poland shows still alarge growth potential. A question “how quickly itwill be realized” remains.

Analysing the cycle of mature e-commercemarket development we are able to distinguishlegible phases related to the dynamics of annualgrowth: revolution (over 100 percent growth yearin, year out), development (over 50 percentgrowth), evolution (over 20 percent), stabilization(below 20 percent). In 2008 the British marketwas in the evolution phase (about 30 percent ofannual growth), the American one – stabilization(a few dozens of percent). Gradual flattening ofgrowth dynamics curves is now intensified by thepresent economic situation and consumer moods.The index growth rate forecasts for future yearsare nowadays corrected down (by 10 percent onthe average), however still being in black (whichcannot be said about traditional trade).

The first two phases have already occurred onthe Polish market:

Dynamics of annual growths (up to the previous year)

Internet shops e-commerce (total) Auction platforms

%

50

100

150

200

250

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Source: SMB report: Polish e-commerce market. 25.03.2009


By 2005 we observed the “explosion” phase.In 2008 we completed the “revolution” phase,which was in the fourth quarter of the yearweakened by the economic slowdown. It is alsoworth mentioning that in 2008 trading wasrealized by means of internet auctions fasterthan in traditional shops (48.36 percent).

The indicator of general climate of theeconomic situation in trading in February 2009reached the level – 10, which presently does notindicate the trend reverse. The year 2009 forthe Polish e-commerce will mean an initial periodof the evolutionary development phase at theestimated increase of returns on the level of 20percent in 2009. What will get stronger,however, is the internet searching effect beforepurchase making – finding the possible offer willbe significant to consumers having access to thenet due to economic slowdown.

Purchasers in InternetAccording to Megapanel research during 2008

the number of internauts increased by 1.4 mln,which in comparison with 2007 constitutes thegrowth by 9.8 percent at the same time already66 percent of internauts declare to do shoppingin the net57. It stands for a 10 percent growth inrelation to the previous year.

What may worry within the longer period isthe decreasing dynamics of internaut numbergrowth or the percentage of internet

purchasers. It may mean that the increases ofe-trading turnouts will to a larger degree dependmore on purchasers in internet and thefrequency of purchases being made than onwinning new purchasers. The branch ofelectronic trading does not have a significantinfluence on technical infrastructure, prices ofaccess devices and the access itself(parameters of the number of internauts). Themain area of activity should be dedicated toconvincing internauts to buy in internet, as theirbehaviour may be decisive as regards the marketdynamics.

Positive information within this area relate toactivities carried out at the state levelconcerning internet access (including internetdevelopment in rural areas) or the governmentalprogram of activities for the benefit of supportto e-trading and e-services58. We shouldalso mention the initiative of the greatestPolish e-commerce enterprises appointingwithin the SMB (Direct Marketing Association)the e-commerce group focused on proactivesupport of e-trading development.

Internet shopsAt the end of December 2008 the catalogue of

internet shops kept by Sklepy24.pl included 4,615registered verified e-commerce businesses. Atthe end of 2007 the number was estimated toreach about 4,000 Internet shops (3,300entities were registered in the catalogue). It

Assortment structure of Polish Internet shops

Category 2007 2008 2008 Growth 2008 (%) do 2007

(%)House & Garden 492 818 17.7 66.3Gifts & Accessories 350 496 10.7 41.7Health & Beauty 343 489 10.6 42.6Clothes 297 454 9.8 52.9Photo & Electronic Appliances 342 433 9.4 26.6Computer 336 404 8.8 20.2Child 250 335 7.3 34.0Sport & Tourism 222 319 6.9 43.7Hobby 241 285 6.2 18.3Auto & Moto 171 233 5.0 36.3Books & Multimedia 202 227 4.9 12.4Dainties 83 122 2.6 47.0Total 3,257 4,615 100.0 41.7

Source: Sklepy24.pl 12.2007




stands for the growth of total number of shopsby 41.7 percent. The greatest growth year inyear out took place in the categories of House& Garden (66.3 percent), Clothes (52.9 percent)and Dainties (47 percent).

Such large growth of shop number may berelated to the following factors:

• new payers of e-commerce (in particularexpanding internet with distribution channels ofexisting firms);

• the shops that have existed before, butwere not categorized register in the catalogue;

• proffesionalization of an activity by naturalpersons (business activity);

• development of the offer of e-commerceplatforms providing access to infrastructure toconduct one’s own internet shop.

The comparison of monthly traffic statistics(December 2007 to December 2008) acc. toMegapanel research shows that on one hand thecategory of Internet Shops was visited by 5percent more persons, but on the other hand itmeant in fact the range decrease (due to thelarger growth of the number of new internauts).It confirms the weakening dynamics in thegrowth of new purchasers which for shopsresults in the necessity of more intensive

competition (which is suggested by the greaternumber of hits and much longer time spent by aninternaut on websites of internet shops).

Bankruptcies of some internet shops werewidely talked about in media at the end of 2008and at the beginning of 2009. Undoubtedly it isan abuse to treat equally the cases when abusiness activity is closed because of itsunprofitabliness and the swindles by means ofinternet (taking advantage most of all of riskybehaviour of consumers and not technologicalabuses). Nevertheless, the strongly negativeundertone of the above is the fact that e-commerce entrepreneurs will have to face. Trust,reliability, safety are becoming, next to price andcomfort, significant factors of online shopping.

Internet auctionsJust like in case of internet shops auctions

recorded the growth of the number of visitors, butthe drop of range is related to a larger number ofinternauts. What is also visible is the effect of thegrowth of number of hits and the time spent onmaking a decision but to a smaller degree than incase of internet shops (finding anew offerer iscarried out within the same platform).

According to such depiction, it is not only therange that dropped but also the number ofinternauts in comparison with December 2007.Thus where do growths in separately depicted

Comparison of monthly traffic statistics – category of Internet shops

Dec. 2007 Dec. 2008 Change (%)RU 7,154,851 7,569,146 5.79PV 360,760,825 491,506,911 36.24Average time per user 00:33:51 00:48:04 42.00Range (%) 50.59 48.76 -3.62

Source: Megapanel PBI/Gemius, XII 2007-2008

Comparison of monthly traffic statistics – category of Internet auctions

Dec. 2007 Dec. 2008 Change (%)RU 7,795,880 8,220,882 5.45PV 3,717,170,962 4,564,755,783 22.80Average time per user 04:08:21 05:03:29 22.20Range (%) 55.13 52.96 -3.94




auctions and shops come from? Most of all theyresult from the behaviour of internauts thathitherto had used only one form of onlineshopping (auctions or shops) and then expendedtheir behaviour with the other shopping form.

Still it is Allegro.pl that is the leader ofauction platforms. The service strengthened itsposition during the year at the expense of otherauction platforms by increasing its number ofvisitors from 7.42 mln internauts in December2007 to 8.1 mln in December 2008. It standsfor a 99 percent growth, i.e. much more thanthe average for the category of auctions. Allegroalso actively wins new internauts – the range ofthis service remained almost unchanged duringthe year.

An event that was widely talked about refersto eBay’s decision to close the Polish branch ofthe company and to support the Polish version ofthe service from abroad.

SummaryWe expect a year of slower growth and of e-

-commerce sector stabilization. E-commercemarket will exceed the amount of PLN 13.2billion in 2009 (growth by 20 percent in relationto previous year), including tourist services it willreach PLN 14.5 billion. Without transbordertrade stimulation (restrictions related toordering goods from Poland and even in thecountries of the European Union that werecommented in press) due to the weal Polish zlotyno considerable strengthening of shoppingabroad can be expected. What will strengthen,

however, is the effect of using internet to searchfor the most favourable offer even if thepurchase is to be made outside the net. Thevalue of purchases made outside internet, butunder its influence may reach even as much asPLN 25 billion.

The greatest challenges that entrepreneurswill have to face include the adjustment of theirbusiness activity to a slower growth (which mayresult in stronger competition in the sector) andin case of companies acting also outside internet– an attempt to evaluate and use the “offlineeffect”.

Comparison of monthly traffic statistics – category of Internet shops + auctions

Dec. 2007 Dec. 2008 Change (%)RU 9,729,786 9,367,755 -3.72Range (%) 68.80 60.35 -12.28


Allegro.pl – transaction values expressed in thousand of PLN

2006 2007 2008Annual transaction value 2,500 3,800 5,200Year-to-previous year percent 52 37Number of sold items 46 70.5 96.7Year-to- previous year percent 53 37

Source: Allegro.pl

52“Report on cross-border e-commerce in the EU”; Commission of theEuropean Communities53TNS Infratest for Google54“Polish Internet” 2008/2009 Gemius55TNS Infratest56Index GUS 2008/200757“Report on cross-border e-commerce in the EU”; Commission of theEuropean Communities58The Ministry of Economy