The Australian Bloodhorse Review ("ABR") has readily adapted to the online world despite being historically positioned as a publisher of Australia's leading thoroughbred breeding & racing magazine.

In recent years the ABR has introduced new product lines, re-branded others, and appears committed to a strategy that zeroes in on their differentiators thereby allowing them to maximize their main profit sources. Thus, whilst the monthly magazine continues to be published (and reinforces the ABR brand as a publisher of solidly researched and well written content), the original ABR website has recently been subsumed by the Stallions site which originated (like most websites of years past) as a technological extension of their well-known Sires Annual.

Is the online strategy working?

Stallions is reportedly second only to the Australian Stud Book as the most visited thoroughbred-related website in Australia. The site is content rich (and free; the expense borne by those who list their stallions with the site), well supported by the majority of thoroughbred studs, it is regularly updated, and with page hits exceeding the million mark each month the site has also become a magnet for advertisers who pay the minimum of $500 a week for the privilege of having their company name appear on the site.

"But it's the INTERNET! How on earth can they justify those sorts of advertising prices?" I hear some people ask.

"Easily" would be my response. "It's all to do with self-selection and targeting."

Let me explain what I mean by that. If I click onto the AAP site, for example, I have a choice - racing, breeding, or sports information. If I click on the breeding section I am, in effect, self-selecting the information that I then want to read. Similarly with the Stallions site. There are a number of sub-categories within the site that allow me to choose what I look at. What we are seeing then is an ability for a website to target and develop a relationship with niche audiences who seek very specific information. This offers advertisers targeting and selling opportunities that ten years ago were still the stuff of dreams.

Some of you may think that $500 a week is expensive. Well, there is always the saying my Father was fond of which was "You get what you pay for." At another level think about this: We are constantly bombarded with advertising messages. There are ads on the side of our coffee mugs, alongside the roads that we drive on, in newspapers and magazines, covering bridges we drive under or across, interspersed with music we listen to, they pop up in movies, they're in our email in-trays, the shops ... they're even in the elevator. There are in fact so many sales messages that research shows that general advertising is fast assuming the status of white noise - most of us ignore it (scary isn't it when you consider how much money it costs to advertise?).

It is therefore of singular importance that if you are going to spend money promoting a product/service you need to specifically target your advertising message to a niche audience. If you can achieve that then consumers are far more likely to notice your ad and spend money on products as the product will directly relate to their category of interest.

Niche websites allows you to tap into that category of interest. But equally you have to pay for the privilege of interacting with such valuable consumer groups.

I'd recommend you now go back and have a look at AAP and also Stallions. Click into the sub-sections of each site and see who's advertising in which section. Does each ad make sense? Does it 'fit'? If not, why not?

You may be thinking at this point that the Stud Book and Stallions are the only sites that can boast seven figure monthly 'page hits'. They're not. There are many others who boast high 'hit rates' - AAP, RaceNet, Cyberhorse's Virtual FormGuide, Thoroughbred Village, MM SalesRing, OzHorse, Thoroughbred Internet, the Bloodhorse, Let it Ride, the various Race Clubs ... (amongst others). All these sites carry up to the minute content, a number of them have good writers working for them, most offer a raft of products/services that allow you to further target your advertising to meet very specific needs of consumers - and as they are content rich portals they serve as magnets for people seeking information (whether it's a link to a site or general information).

Stay tuned - tomorrow I'll look at the questions you need to ask yourself before you consider online advertising. Later in the week we will also look at how advertising agencies have responded to the Internet, and what challenges technology is presenting to a number of companies.