What Newspapers Can Learn from Google About Ad Sales

Moritz Wuttke, CEO Asia & China, Publicitas, Switzerland

Newspapers must change the way they’re selling advertising in the multimedia world, says Mr Wuttke, whose presentation focused on how newspaper companies can change their sales practices for the multimedia world.

Here are the challenges facing publishers, according to Mr Wuttke: Websites are not sold like newspapers but on audience and on reach; most newspaper websites limit themselves to newspaper content and dismiss search, community content, video, blogs, local directories, shopping, email etc; and newspaper sales staff have difficulties selling online.

Using examples of both good and bad practices, he recommended that newspapers develop their online and ‘bundled’ sales channels, that they adopt dynamic pricing, that they develop new advertising products (local search and hyper-local content, cost-per-action payment models, crossmedia packages) and that they work harder to integrate and develop social and “influencer” media, which are changing the media landscape.

Mr Wuttke pointed to the Google Print Ads system as one good model. Google, which currently offers advertisers nearly 800 US newspapers in which to place ads, has integrated several successful elements worth studying: the system makes the process easy; it tells the advertisers clearly why they should advertise in newspapers; and it allows the advertisers to make their own advertisements, and to set their own price - it’s up to the publisher to accept or reject it.

Here are two of Mr Wuttke’s conclusions:

  Social media are having a big impact on media and are fundamentally changing the advertising market. Newspaper must find ways to cooperate with and integrate social networks.

  Newspapers should establish their own advertising e-sales channels like Google’s and look for cooperation/ bundling methods with newspaper peers. The target should be 10 percent of revenue and 50 percent of new customers in two years via the online channel.

Don’t underestimate print role in multimedia sales

Eamonn Byrne, Business Director, World Association of Newspapers

Newspapers have a unique advantage in multimedia sales - the print product, which often gets overlooked in the rush to digital, says Mr Byrne.

“We are in a position to exploit multimedia in a way that Google, or Yahoo, or our TV competitors are not,” he says. “We have print. We have digital, which offers the opportunity for us to become broadcasters, to become radio. We have the opportunity to become multimedia companies that other companies don’t have. We can offer print, mobile, video, and audio combinations across our media, to the advantage of our advertisers.”

Mr Bryne highlighted the advantages of print in a multimedia mix - research shows that print and digital advertising combinations are far more effective than one media alone.

“Let’s not be obsessed with digital, let’s not be obsessed with print, let’s not be obsessed with mobile. Let’s be obsessed with audience and let’s be obsessed with advertisers and let the rest work out.”

But for multimedia advertising sales to be effective, sales staff must be adequately trained for the new world, said Mr Byrne, who focused his presentation on the importance and difficulties of training sales staff to understand the new products that newspaper companies are developing.

“We have sales teams that might be aware of newspaper metrics. If they understand print, why would we think they would understand TV metrics? This implies a massive learning gap at the point of sale when sales staff is interacting with advertisers.”

“There can’t be a disconnect between our wonderful strategies and products and the guys at the coal face, on the sales floor,” he said. “Everything depends on our interaction at the point of sale.”

More from the World Association of Newspapers at www.wan-press.org.

Redefining the Newspapers

Frédéric Sitterlé, Special Advisor, Figaro Group, France

“We often hear that newspapers are in trouble. That’s not exactly the truth,” says Mr Sitterlé.

He pointed to the Figaro Group, which is known for its flagship daily, Le Figaro, with circulation of 300,000. But that isn’t the whole story. With other newspapers and magazines in the group, five million people are reached by the print products each month.

And that doesn’t even include on-line products.

Mr Sitterlé the Figaro group set a target to reach 10 million unique users, and 20 percent of the group’s turnover, by 2010.

They reached both targets this year, and Mr Sitterlé’s presentation focused on how they did it.

He described a three-prong strategy for growth: web activities related to the core business are created in-house; new businesses where Figaro believes it can be a leader, such as niche sites for sports and culture, are bought outright; and new businesses where success wasn’t clear, such as an e-commerce site for fashion, are provided with small investments - a 20 percent interest, for example, with the opportunity to buy them outright later.

He had these recommendations for web growth:

  Keep moving, be agile, make it small and efficient. “Facebook was 60 people for a very long time,” he says. “It’s not the number of people you hire, but the number of customers and users.”

  Ensure that a “digital native” is appointed to the Group’s Board.

  Act now, but be patient.

“This makes the city alive”

Mirek Kowalski, Managing Director, MyCity Project, Poland

The Media Regionalne Group in Poland likes citizen journalists so much, it sets them up as “mobile journalists” with a free application for their portable telephones that allows them to record photos, video and voice and create their multi-media stories.

“The newsroom is everywhere,” says Mr Kowalski. “The whole editorial team works in public places: universities, shopping centres, cinemas.”

In fact, citizen journalists and professional journalists are equally important at the new Moje Miasto, or MyCity, website, which has been gradually rolled out, beginning in 2006, in 10 of Poland’s largest cities. The mobile journalist software is just one of the innovations at the website, which fuses news with community interest segments. The teams also produce free weekly newspapers, in print, for distribution to all households where MyCity is available.

The editorial strategy is built on three pillars - news, people (registration is required, e-mail service and blogs are offered) and places (maps, ratings, entertainment) - with a total local focus.

MyCity hopes to have 750,000 unique users by the end of the year, 1.5 million by the end of 2009 and become profit making in 2010. Here are two of the lessons learned:

  Big national advertisers show more interest for the combination of news and community on the site than for pure community sites.

  The structure of the site by city district is received and appreciated on a local level.

How to develop websites at low cost (since revenue is not yet great)

Philippe Vignon, CEO, Edipresse Digital, Switzerland

In July 2007, Edipresse’s digital activities were in serious trouble.

A huge team spent 18 months developing four newspaper websites at a cost of three million euros, and the sites were full of bugs and errors and not delivering what was expected. Traffic was falling, journalists were frustrated, the technical team was demoralized and the sales team had problems.

“It all went wrong,” says Mr Vignon, who described the company’s successful response - development of a dedicated “web factory” to take charge of digital developments.

The new organisation launched 16 websites in nine months, reduced the budget by a factor of three, and increased traffic on all sites by 50 percent.

Mr Vignon described the new organisation and structure, The profile of the employees was a key factor: young, with an average age of 22, and passionate - they all have their own successful websites outside of work

Mr Vignon had these suggestions:

  The digital world isn’t like the print world. “You can’t rely on your existing structure to cope with changes,” he says.

  Speed is essential, and digital development is much faster than print development.

- Integrate web experience into the organisation, but not into existing print structures. “They’ll just get swallowed,” he says.