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190 participants
from 43 countries Daily NewsSummaries of presentations at the 2002 WAN Advertising. These summaries will be posted each day. Please check back later for the most recent updates. For more information -- including the soon-to-be-published Conference Report -- contact Annabel Chourré, WAN, 25 rue d'Astorg, 75008 Paris France, Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00, Fax +33 1 47 42 49 48. E-mail: achourre@wan.asso.fr WAN members will receive the report – and all WAN publications – for free. Click here for membership information. Next event: The 55th World Newspaper Congress and 9th World Editors Forum, the global meetings of the world's press, 26-29 May 2002. Click here for programme and registration information. Press release: Friday, 22 February
The advertising market will continue to be weak for the rest of 2002 and the first quarter of 2003, but will likely bounce back sometime next year, says Mr Owen.
"Advertising is not an investor priority. We assume it will come back eventually," said Mr Owen. "We assume it will be feeble in 2002 but will come back in 2003." Of greater concern to newspaper investors, according to a Morgan Stanley study, are: --Circulation declines while readership stagnates; --Women under 30, who are big spenders on fast moving consumer goods, are getting harder to reach; --"Commoditized content" is undermining reader loyalty (the practice of copying competitors new products eliminates the competitive advantages of the products); --Consumers are less interested in politics; -- and traditional newspapers have high exit costs (they're labour- and capital-intense, making it difficult to leave the business if things go wrong).
Classified
Strategies Don't Work The strategies that newspapers are using to protect their recruitment classified from online competition aren't working, says Mr Hjaltelin. "The typical newspaper's internet service does not stop human resources managers from using online competitors," he says. The combination of the recession and the rise of internet classifieds means the situation will get even worse, he says. "What is very interesting about this business now, compared to two years ago (when we laughed at the ridiculous internet strategies that lost a billion dollars a year) is that the four or five or six internet companies left are very very strong. As the human resources manager's wallet gets smaller, these players are going to try to increase their share of the wallet. And newspapers are just trying to defend." Mr Hjaltelin offered this advice: focus on "share of wallet"; make your online offering as good as the best online competitor; do not give your advertisers any reason to speak to online competitors; and offer one-stop shopping.
Fighting Back
For Lost Business The recruitment classifieds business isn't gone, but it is different today, says Mr Thorhuus. A mere decade ago, Dagens Nyheter was the number one source for recruitment ads on the Swedish media scene. But with the growth of the internet recruiters, there is now a lot of competition. Mr Thorhuus admits that Dagens Nyheter was slow to react, and that the problem is ongoing. "Print ads are decreasing, and online will increase. The only question is speed," he says. But Dagens Nyheter is back in the race, having recently sorted out its online recruitment strategy so that it is now producing significant income. His presentation focused on how they went about it. "The revenues still don't cover the loss of print ads, but it is a start," he says. "If we can get new revenue from the online ads, it's better than nothing."
Helping Local
Papers Compete for National Advertising Can small local papers compete with the big boys? The level the playing field and help Norway's 200 local and regional newspapers -- 150 of which have circulations under 10,000 -- compete for national advertising, the Norwegian Media Businesses Association launched a joint page traffic research project. The project was undertaken because Norway's bigger newspapers are thinking of launching a "Quality Ratings Points" rate card pricing system based on exposure. This would affect the smaller newspapers through some 50 joint advertisement sales organisations they belong to across the country -- and each of the smaller papers could not afford to do the research themselves. The Association took a representative sample of 28 newspapers and interviewed more than 3,000 readers over a four-week period about their reading habits. Among other things, the researchers found that the average page exposure in local newspapers are higher than the numbers found for national or regional newspapers.
Size Does Count Newspapers are often reluctant to conduct advertising effectiveness research because they are frightened of what they'll find says Mr Roulstone. But that attitude is nonsense. "We gave confidence that we, as a medium, are effective in building brands, we, as a medium, are effective in getting their message across. You have to remind them why they are using your newspaper in the first place," he said. Advertising effectiveness research shows that size, colour, repetition and other factors have a significant impact on recall. So the company uses this evidence to convince clients to buy bigger, more colourful and more frequent ads. And the clients are convinced: in one Bonnier newspaper, Business a.m. of Scotland, colour ads have increased 23 percent, average size has increased 14 percent and single bookings are down 48 percent since the research was incorporated into the sales presentation, said Mr. Roulstone. "We need to build a currency that allows them to realise that advertising with us is effective," he says.
Mobilising
Market Research The market research firm Wireless Opinion recently carried out a readership survey for the Swedish Newspaper Publishers Association to demonstrate the effectiveness of using text messaging on portable telephones to generate instant research on newspaper reach and effectiveness. In a pilot study conducted in January and February 2001, 200 mobile telephone users recruited from a random sample answered questions via text messaging on a daily basis for 30 days. The study, to determine if the method was suitable for measuring daily reach and for frequency surveys, found that up to 81 percent answered every day and the majority found it easy and not disturbing. In a second project, 2000 mobile phone users were recruited for a 12-week period to determine if a panel was willing and capable of answering one question every day for the period and if a research organisation could handle the complexity of such a study. The company found that wireless panel surveys are of great advantage when following development over time and when mapping consumer behaviour and that the results compared favourably with traditional methods.
Ideas from
Around the World That Sell The Regipresse team took conference participants on a wide-ranging tour from Chad to Belgium to cyberspace in search for ideas that sell. In Chad, newspapers lacked a distribution system because the war-ravaged country lacks roads. So, in a project with the European Union, they are helping to build the roads they need to get newspapers to their people. In Belgium, the newspaper Le Dernière Heure/Les Sports created a 10-part serial supplement that provided "everything you want to know about the internet" that increased readership over the long term. And to keep those readers, the newspaper launched a new Sunday internet magazine that became a leader in its market. And on the internet, Regipresse created a business-to-business platform that helps newspapers and its clients cooperate in the sharing of information.
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