Southern Cross Austereo is highlighting the central role digital is now playing in its future plans after posting a $296 million loss on write-downs to its regional businesses this year.
The broadcaster made special mention of the growth it had achieved in digital during its results presentation yesterday and the head of its digital expansion, director of digital and innovation Clive Dickens, says that with a team a fraction of that of major publishers SCA has grown to become one of the most popular of all Australian tagged publishers on mobile.
“The team have got used to every month eclipsing the last. But the comparatives become harder to achieve,” Dickens said.
“With the end of year results with mobile we have now firmly established ourselves in the top 10 at number seven on mobile and that is now consistently ahead of Seek and Carsales which of course are digital-only brands.
“On all devices we are firmly established in the top 20 at number 15.”
Dickens said that mobile was one of two keys to the success of SCA's digital strategy which was becoming a central element of the business rather than just a support mechanism for the broadcast arm.
Social media remains at the core of the model, creating content and opportunities for users to share.
“Social provides our number one funnel of daily traffic so we have a large and highly engaged social community that numbers over six million and we can deliver on a good day upwards of half-a-million visits to the site,” he said.
“Over 70% of those visits come through social link sharing. Optimising news feeds to try and get your content into people's times lines has become the new art.”
SCA runs its social program through 250 social accounts across its entire network.
Dickens said one of the biggest challenges was people who clicked on a link to an SCA piece of content then, having viewed it, bounced back to their own social media feed.
“The read the story, they get exposed to the advertising on our site, and then they most likely bounce back to their feed again because increasingly consumers expected their news to come to them in their social environment,” he said.
More than 75% of SCA's traffic now comes through a mobile device.
“We have gone from nowhere to somewhere by effectively adopting a mobile first and social engagement strategy,” he said.
He said that SCA was lucky in that by pushing mobile it did not feel it had a legacy desktop business to protect.
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