Finland is a banana state in online marketing

The finnish ad-galas are held and the digimedia prizes have been given out to the winners. Go Finland! But why the “digital swedes” win in the international competitions and finns usually get nothing? I claim, that in Sweden it is much easier to do creative and quality work for brands. The level of web infrastucture is much more advanced than in Finland. In fact, Finland is in danger to move into  a 5 million citizen banana state of e-commerce and digital marketing. 

Vertaa.fi country manager  Antti Laine wrote that finnish webshops are losing billions to foreign webshops because of their service  (HS opinion 6.4.2008). Compared to the best webshops, the finnish webshops remind of empty brick & mortar shops. The finnish consumer's money is flowing  to foreign webshops and at the same time away from the development of finnish webservices. The online behaviour of brands has a significant impact on people's shopping behaviour. Emarketer recently estimated that the actions on the web increase the online sales with 1 dollar. The same actions increased the brick&mortar sales with 3,45 dollars. Habbo-youth research pointed out that big and well known brands are still remarkably dominating the networking youth's shopping behaviour. The most succesful brands also know  how to build their brand online.

But will that work out in Finland?
The share of online advertising was 8% in 2007. It is the 4th of all the advertising in Finland. (IAB Finland). Without keyword advertising and search engines the share drops down to 4,7%. Dagmar recently published a search-engine survey, that shows  Google being truly a domestic massmedia. Daily more than 72% of the finns use Google. This is not a surprise. In Europe keyword advertising is 45% of all the advertising (IAB Europe). All the signs show, that the share of online advertising is going to grow.  Zenith Optimedia predicts that in 2010 the sfare of global online advertising is 12,3 % of the total. England has had  and is still having it's completely own numbers. In 2007 the share of online advertising was 18% (2,6 billion pounds). It is predicted to grow up to 52,6 % in 2010. Reasons to this massive growth are the quality and versatile supply and developed ad control technologies. 
There are obstacles for the rapid growth of the finnish online advertising, says  Teemu Neiglick from toinen.fi . Finnish online medias are left behind because they only offer masses. The brands are willing to invest on online activities, but the medias don't have special niche solutions to offer  them. 
In Finland we don't have enough tools to deliver the brand's message to the consumer in a relevant context. At the same time, the traditional media is maybe not that attractive media option for the advertiser. The money doesn't find a placement and that is why the brand can't find it's target group.  
And this problem is not only banner or web – related. In largely discussed but little used conversationmarketing lies the same question: putting together the context and the message.  Pekka Karhuvaara on the Image article “the death of the television” says: “Small payment channels can be very cost-effective even with a small viewer share, if they are positioned right – just like magazines.  If there is a good channel specialized in golf which all the finnish golf players are interested in, it  will make money.”

Why is this then such a very concerning phenomen when it comes to the advertising business?
Trying to get the brand's webcontent some audience by using the massmedia is partly a waste of money. 
If the media could provide the brand more cost-effective audience online, then brand could allocate more money to develop critical, consumer response activating webservices that survive in the competitive advantage  The situation today is all but this.

The writer Tiina Sarola is a digital planner at Skandaali.