200 participants from 47 countries
WAN is expanding its conference reporting service to provide more complete summaries of conference presentations to its members and to subscribers to the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project.
Below you will find the summaries from the Friday sessions:
Click here for the summaries from the Thursday sessions:
Added-Value Advertising: More than Ink on Paper
Jim Chisholm, Director of the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper (SFN) project, World Association of Newspapers
Added-value advertising is "all we can do for our customers other than place ink on paper," says Mr Chisholm. "Our role is not to put ink on paper. Our role is to deliver customers to our advertisers."
Mr Chisholm’s presentation included a preview of "Added-Value Advertising", to be published next month in the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, which identifies, analyses and publicises all important operational and strategic developments that could benefit the future of newspapers all over the world. The new report examines a wide range of opportunities for extending advertising revenues.
"What can we do now for advertisers? We can increase effectiveness, look at pricing, and improve service levels," said Mr Chisholm. "But what we can also do is produce better inserts, supplements and services, and better segment products to meet customers’ needs.
"And we can also diversify into things that are very different for us and for our advertisers too -- databases, targeted distribution, out-of-market distribution, help them produce direct mail, undertake surveys..."
The "Added-Value Advertising" report examines all of these areas with case studies, research and new ideas and strategies. Here are a few of the many examples discussed by Mr Chisholm:
Newspapers are utilising in-house resources to create agency services for smaller local advertising customers to help them produce direct mail, point-of-sale materials, stationery, even advertising for other media. A "point system" rewards advertisers with additional services, based on increased advertising expenditures.
Newspapers need products and features programmes that not only work on extending supplements and products but also consider "market driven" projects such as organising seminars for non-competing advertisers on ways to appeal to their common audiences.
Measures of ad effectiveness inform advertisers about the performance of their ads -- and can be leveraged in a way that builds the relationship. "You go back to the advertisers and say, ’this is what happened to your advertising this month.’ You can be armed with information on how he can improve his advertising."
"The number one job we have in terms of adding value is working on effectiveness," says Mr Chisholm.
New insertion capabilities -- like the ability to insert post-it notes into newspapers -- are offering additional advertising opportunities to newspapers and should be examined. The report also examines segmented products and how newspapers are identifying sub-groups of their subscription base to target products.
The report -- and Mr Chisholm’s presentation -- also provides an overview of advertising trends in many markets and how this information can be used to benchmark and defined goals.
"Added-Value Advertising" is the second in the latest series of annual reports from the SFN project, following the recently released "Distribution Revolution." Other reports in the series will be on the role of the newspaper in society, diversification strategies, reaching young readers, and driving more value from the newspaper business. More information can be found at http://www.futureofthenewspaper.com
WAN conducts the SFN project with six strategic business partners -- MAN Roland, PubliGroupe, Unisys, UPM-Kymmene, Samsung Electronics and Telenor.
Television is Changing - and so is its Advertising
Ross Biggam, Director General, Association of Commercial Television in Europe, Belgium
Mr Biggam braved a room full of newspaper executives to say that television remains "the most effective mass medium" despite the fragmentation that cable, digital and satellite has produced. But he also said the effectiveness issue is becoming of secondary importance.
"This debate about who is more effective will be less cutting edge in years to come and there are two reasons why. The first is cross-media ownership. Of the 20 companies I represent, 11 have newspaper interests as well.
"The second reason is that we all face threats, not from each other, but from outside."
Mr Biggam said that threat comes from government-owned broadcasters, and their response to digital technology. "The market is liable to be distorted by competition by broadcasters who don’t answer to shareholders and can write off losses as research and development," he said.
This threat effects newspapers as well, as the public broadcasters are competing with newspapers on the web.
Mr Biggam said the future of broadcast is in digital television. "In the United Kingdom, 50 percent of households have digital TV. It isn’t as dramatic elsewhere in Europe, but the trend is quite clear. Whether you are a media owner or an advertising agency, what this means is fragmentation."
With digital, television must offer advertisers a new audience, or a different audience, he said. And technology will be the answer, he said.
He provided four examples of new types of technology-driven television advertising: Virtual advertising, in which a logo is digitally superimposed on a sports stadium or playing field as a "virtual billboard"; Split-screen advertising, where the commercial appears in a box in the corner of the screen, during the programme, thus avoiding "breaking away" for an ad; advertisements disguised as television shows, such as shopping networks and stories featuring television personalities in advertiser-created environments; and interactive television.
Interactive holds the greatest promise, Mr Biggam said, as it provides the viewer the opportunity to leave the "linear" television environment to go online for more information. Thus, a viewer is invited to click during a commercial for an automobile and is provided with details about the car that appears in the ad.
Though there are many regulatory issues to overcome -- virtual ads, for example, are banned in some countries, and there are questions about the separation of advertising materials from other content -- "I believe new techniques can help us overcome fragmentation," said Mr Biggam.
Internet Joins the Mainstream
Danny Meadows Klue, President, Interactive Advertising Bureau, Europe
Internet has become mainstream, and can now offer advertisers reach and frequency measures like traditional media, says Mr Klue. This makes it a more effective advertising medium.
"The internet has become a key communication tool today," he says. "We don’t even think about it -- we go to the internet to seek information. A tool like e-mail has become so vital that it is hard to imagine how we’d work with it. ’Search’ has become one of the most important tools for the internet economy. The days of printed encyclopaedias are long behind us.
"We use the internet for everything. It’s a mainstream part of our lives," he says. The implication of advertising is that the internet can now provide reach and frequency measures, not only among internet users, but among the entire population.
"One of the challenges we always faced was that the internet could not deliver mass audiences, said Mr Klue. But that is changing.
He cited a British Airways advertising campaign in which two internet sites drew 2.1 million individuals in a single day. "The numbers can now match modest TV campaigns," says Mr Klue. "These are numbers that we couldn’t deliver two years ago."
The "myths" about internet advertising -- such as there is no research, that banners don’t build brands -- have all been exploded, he says, and in a very short time.
The research, in fact, shows that banners do indeed build awareness. It also shows that people spend far more time on-line that most people imagine.
The effects on media audiences are only just beginning and its already thrown up a radical new assessment of how we consume media," says Mr Klue.
Another area that slowed internet advertising growth was a lack of standards, but the IAB is changing that, Mr Klue said. It has set auditing guides and standards, rules for safe on-line shopping and standards for the shape and sizes of ads. The latter continues to develop, and new formats continue to be introduced.
Internet attracts 1 percent to 1.4 percent of European ad spend today, says Mr Klue, but he is optimistic that this will grow to 5 percent to 6 percent in the next five years.
A Publisher’s Perspective on Online Advertising
Constantine Kamaras, CEO, Sport.gr and Vice-Chairman, Interactive Advertising Bureau, Europe
Mr Kamaras provided an overview on media usage trends, advertising trends, newspaper and web similarities and differences to provide an analysis of possible developments in online advertising.
In terms of media usage trends, Mr Kamaras says web usage and use of other interactive media will continue to grow due to new users but also due to higher usage by users that move to broadband. He says traditional media usage will decline, perhaps marginally. Communications and entertainment will be the driver of interactive media, and news will be of lesser importance.
Given the rapid pace of technological innovation -- such as the development of tablet PC and web-ITV -- it may be difficult in the future to delineate media by current definitions. "Is a tablet PC a new medium? No, it is just another way of reading a newspaper," he said. Advertising is changing too -- but less and slower than most people think.
Advertising will eventually follow audience time redistribution, though it will not grow rapidly compared with other sectors of communications spending. The fastest growing component will be interactive media.
"It will eventually follow audience time, with some delay, and lowly, but it will have to," he says. "Internet takes about 11 percent of people’s time, and anywhere from 3 to 5 percent of advertising. This will have to change, it will have to become better aligned."
Publishers can expect more multiple media campaigns, with advertisers seeking clearly different benefits from different media.
Mr Kamaras sees a slow and gradual move to terms of trading that include "pay per performance" elements. Targeting advertising will increase, especially via direct e-mail.
"Publishers’ skills will need to be extended and a clear policy -- where to have a consistent approach and where to be adaptive -- will need to be developed," he says.
The newspaper and the web are similar in several ways, says Mr Kamaras: both, like all media, are selling not a medium but an audience; both are selling it on a CPM basis; both generally sell space on page; and both are going to rely on ad revenue for the foreseeable future.
There are differences as well: the web relies even more on advertising; the balance of power is tilted more toward the advertiser due to budget scarcity and technology; news content is not the web’s most popular; there is poor audience data, given the possibilities.
Web also has new issues to confront such as privacy issues and ad blocking software. Other key issues: the question of how to delineate content from advertising; the lack of control in the advertising creative process for publishers; the use of user info data and server statistics; the format of the ratecard (cost per click, per registration, per purchase).
Motivation and Leadership: Art or Science?
Sally Winfield, Group Classified Director, Associated Newspapers Ltd., United Kingdom
"Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible," says Ms Winfield, who presented these "rules" for successful personnel management:
Hire those with the talents and expertise you lack. Don’t be threatened by them. They will help you stay on the cutting edge and bring distinction to you organisation.
Your No. 2 pick is your most important hire. Pick one who complements your management style, shows loyalty without being a "yes-man" and has a talent for working with others.
When you are debating an issue, loyalty means everyone giving you their honest opinions, whether they think you’ll like it or not. Disagreement, at this stage, is stimulating. But once a decision is made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means everyone executing the decision as if it were his or her own.
Surround yourself with cheerful, optimistic people. They reward you with loyalty and camaraderie vital for success.
Spell out clearly to new employees the exact duties and requirements of their jobs and how they will be rewarded.
Make sure each employee has challenging and important work. Even the lowest-ranking workers must feel they are making a valuable and appreciated contribution to the company.
The day staff stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
Be fair and impartial in meting out rewards, workloads and punishments. Imbalances makes everyone feel uncomfortable, even the favoured.
The leader sets the example. The other people in the organisation take their cue from the leader -- not from what the leader says, but what the leader does.
Always plan several options in detail. Get a grasp of the possible consequences of each, always keeping your eye on the big picture.
Let your staff inspire you. At times, an overwhelming workload may force you to consider lowering your standards. Remember that the final product must represent the best efforts of the entire group.
Have an insatiable demand to be in charge of the information flow. If you don’t know what information is flowing through your organisation, you don’t know what’s going on it your organisation.
Be bold in vision and careful in planning. Try something new but be meticulous enough in your proposal to give your ideas a chance of succeeding.
When crisis strikes, immediately address your staff. Take charge of the situation, offer a plan of action, ask for support, and show absolute confidence in a positive outcome.
Let go of the past. Don’t waste time or energy regretting past mistakes or fretting over what you can’t change.
Making people mad is part of being a leader. An individual’s hurt feelings run a distant second to getting the job done properly.
