I started our first brand The Channel in 2006. Since then we've acquired almost all of the locally owned tech media brands in the New Zealand market. We've built a formidable portfolio that covers all aspects of the New Zealand marketplace.

In 2009 we merged all of these websites together, essentially to create a grand central station for technology news in New Zealand.

We called it TechDay.

The merger got us on the map; large-scale advertisers could finally buy the hundreds of thousands of impressions they wanted.

Since then, technology marketing has changed significantly. In fact, micro niches are where most of the interest is.

An example is that advertisers are willing to pay us more to target a small number of government CIOs than all the CIOs, including the private sector ones, in New Zealand.

It might sound odd, but the marketer can tune the message precisely to the smaller group and more effectively execute the campaign.

At the same time a major shift has generally been happening in society and computing. The age of immediacy. One can visit a cloud provider's website, order massive numbers of virtual servers and within minutes they're provisioned and ready.

Gone are the days that a brand in a publisher's arsenal is sacrosanct. As a publisher we need to be moving as fast, or even faster, than the readers.

We've taken the idea of these micro niches and combined them with the on-demand nature of the cloud.

This has seen a significant change in recent days to how TechDay operates. Our seven sections of the TechDay website have become stand-alone websites. They are centrally orchestrated and work as a clever network but have different personalities and target markets.

We've also adopted a system that will allow us to advance these websites quickly and launch new ones within hours.

If you want to target CFOs in Wellington, we can launch a targeted site and invite the perfect target readers to it within hours. Almost any segment interested in technology can be targeted and likewise a more horizontal segmentation by area of interest is possible. The example might be interest in cloud.

Our aim is to be the most agile publisher in the technology industry.

Changes we've made in the last month:

Brand changes: •    Game Console has been renamed PlayOn.co.nz to recognise a broader focus of home entertainment, digital TV, streaming, audio visual and gadgets while retaining its video gaming heritage. •    MacGuide has been renamed AppleWatch to recognise the large percentage of Apple and iOS users that may be Windows-based and don't necessarily relate to the ‘Mac' brand. •    Start-Up has been renamed BizEdge to recognise that businesses of all sizes are using technologies like cloud, mobility and big data to transform their operations and industries. •    Educate has been renamed Educators to clarify to advertisers that our focus is on ICT teachers, principals and deputy principals - not the students.

New brands •    ProgressiveCFO – A new brand that appeals to finance, operations and general management. These top levels executives carry the risk of disaster recovery, big budget decisions and the transformative potential of technology.  •    GovICT – Is a subset of our IT Brief audience. We've ring-fenced the key ICT decision-makers in the government sector and are creating them their very own news website.

More sites in tight target markets are coming soon.

As you can see we've been busy. Our new more agile approach has been in the works for over a year. We've recently moved our own websites to this new structure and are now reaching out to look for marketers to trial new target markets with their own sites.

Give either your TechDay marketing consultant or myself a call. We'd love to hear about your dream target market, as we've got something really different to offer here.

Best regards,

Sean Mitchell