Buzz to Challenge Google in Thailand's Online Ad Market

2008-04-24 08:10:26 - In March Global Search giant Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) said it expected that online advertising in Thailand will increase dramatically in the coming year, growing from less than one per cent of an industry worth $2.4 billion (75.7 billion baht) to around 10 per cent of this, $240m.

At the time Buzz Technologies Inc (OTC:BZTG) a Thai based firm had just released a Thai Language Google Competitor offering support for Thai/English and English Thai ad market. Today the company has started the online Beta Test of it's own search engine, www.12buzz.com as well as 2 separate online ad networks as well as offering a co branded 'pay per

search' service to other websites. The company claims the key factor now is getting the major Thai web sites to use the service, as they represent more than half the local market, having the ads on these sites will see a widespread adoption of Buzz Ads and Buzz Search. Several Thai sites have today started carrying the service and many more are expected to follow in the near future. It is yet to be seen if Buzz can win over the Big Thai Internet companies.

Google predicted Thailand would see an explosion of spending on online and search-related advertising that would be worth an estimated $250 million (7.88 billion baht), according to Google's regional managing director for Australia, NZ, Korea and Southeast Asia Richard Kimber who sees a very strong future for Google in Thailand.

The Thai Real Estate sector is offered it's own service from Buzz, anyone using the Buzz One-2-Property platform can also host their own virtual show, flash slide show, mapping and the most detailed database yet. The One-2-Property platform has been built to be extremely user-friendly with 24/7 customer support. With the addition today of paid search result ads this sector certainly will become a big part of Buzz's local revenue, some of the countries biggest Hotels and Developers can already be seen on www.12buzz.com search and www.12property.com .

True Corporation Public Company Limited (SET: TRUE) is a communication conglomerate in Thailand and a subsidiary of the Charoen Pokphand group. True controls Thailand's largest cable TV provider TrueVisions, its largest ISP TrueOnline and its third-largest mobile operator TrueMove. Offer Detailed Statistics on Thai Web Traffic at www.truehits.net and will provide a good guide to the progress of Buzz's network in Thailand.

The Online ad market expectations from sites such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) and the new player Buzz Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:BZTG), remain healthy, according to an analyst who sifted through data from comScore.

Analyst Jeffrey Lindsay expects online advertising to grow by 23.9% in the US and 23.3% worldwide in 2008. The numbers would be a slight drop from last year's growth of 25% in the US and 26.3% worldwide but are still solid due to a shift away from traditional media outlets.

Lindsay said that only 8.5% of all advertising is now done online, which provides room for growth even when the economy is doing poorly.

ComScore reported that Internet searches were up 32% to 67 billion in February. Google continued to dominate with around 63% of the worldwide search market