NEWS: The Malaysian Digital Association is born

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Digital Association (MDA) has been formed to consolidate and raise the profile of the digital advertising and marketing industry.

The MDA comprises online publishers, digital service providers, media owners, publishers, media agencies, creative agencies and others.

The media giants in MDA are Star Publications (M) Bhd, which publishes The Star newspaper, The Star Online news portal, and various other portals; satellite TV broadcaster Astro All Asia Networks plc, and integrated media investment group Media Prima Bhd.

Also there are major advertising companies Ogilvy One Worldwide and Leo Burnett & Arc Worldwide.

One of MDA’s main goals is to standardise and audit pageviews, unique visitors and the time Internet users spend surfing various websites.

This will enable advertisers to better, more accurately gauge a site’s popularity when making advertising expenditure decisions.

Serm Teck Choon, an MDA council member and a representative for Star Publications, said the association wants to create one common standard of such viewing statistics, and hopes to achieve this within a year.

Credibility boost

According to the MDA, there are currently no audits on such information and advertisers have to take the claims of the website owners as gospel truth.

Another MDA goal is to standardise technical issues, such as banner advertisement sizes which currently vary from website to website.

It will also promote and educate advertisers on the potential of digital advertising. There are currently no figures available on the size of digital advertising market, so the MDA is working to gather such figures.

Terence Dorairaj, MDA president, said the formation of the association is a milestone for the digital industry in Malaysia.

“This standardisation will bring much needed credibility and will be a catalyst for the growth of digital advertising expenditure,” he said.

Dorairaj is chief operating officer at Digital Five Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of Astro and is a digital entity that publishes content across several wireless and web-based platforms.

The other MDA committee members are vice-president Rene Menezes (who is chief executive officer of Media Two Point Zero); secretary Gary Tay, (chief executive officer of Amphibia Digital Sdn Bhd) and treasurer Meera Thuraivel (group advertising manager for Malaysiakini).

There are also 13 elected council members.