IFRA

Crowne Plaza Hotel, Copenhagen, Denmark
Thursday and Friday, 4-5 March, 2010

200 participants from 38 countries

Where will the money come from?
Eamonn Byrne, Business Director, World Association of Newspapers and News
Publishers (WAN-IFRA)

Mr Byrne opened the conference with an overview of advertising trends.

Many markets reported a 30 percent to 40 percent drop last year. The USA, for example, was particularly hard hit ­ a 29 percent drop in newspaper advertising revenues in the third quarter of 2009, according to the Newspaper Association of America. And Zenith Optimedia said there was a 13.1 percent average fall in advertising revenues worldwide in the first half of 2009.

But Mr Byrne said it was important to remember that it isn't only media companies that suffered in 2009 ­ the downturn hit nearly all industries. And the forecasts for 2010, for the most part, expect improvement.

But while the economy will improve, the structural challenges facing the industry are likely to remain. Although digital revenues are growing rapidly as a percentage of overall revenue, they are unlikely to replace or exceed the lost print revenues.

"We have a great future but the future isn't digital on its own ­ it has to be much more than this," said Mr Bryne. "This is out conundrum and why we are here today ­ we are looking for solutions to this problem."

Advertising Solutions for the Fast-Changing Media Environment
Moritz Wuttke, Founder, NextMedia Initiatives, Switzerland/China

There is no doubt that the media environment is changing more rapidly as ever ­ social media and the giant search engines are impacting media, communication and advertising fundamentally.

Mr Wuttke advocates engaging with the social networks, creating your own, and finding alternatives to Google to find successful advertising solutions on the web.

"You don't need to wait for Google to eat more of your lunch, you can do it yourself," said Mr Wuttke, whose wide-ranging presentation provided advice for developing sales channels, pricing methodologies, research and development, contextual and local advertising, and stick content.

Some of his many suggestions:

• Integrate and optimise your ad networks for selling unsold inventory. "There are other companies who are more transparent than Google, will share more revenue with you."

• Develop a simple on-line process for selling advertisements online ­ for print and well as online ads. "People today are used to buying things on-line," said Mr Wuttke. "Make it a simple process for print ads, sell them online, sell them in a bundle with on-line ads."
   
• Adopt the Google "beta" development model ­ "try things out online and be flexible enough to abandon them if they don't work. "Why not engage your readers and ask them what they like and don't like?"
   
• Integrate Facebook, Digg, contextual advertising and other social networks. "Once you accept you don't own the web, it becomes a question of, 'how can I tap into that (social network) market for people who could become a reader?"
   
• Create your own social networks, based on archival materials that engage readers ­ photos, historical content, cars, sports etc.
   
• Develop mobile applications. "There is no Google on that, only publishers," said Mr Wuttke. "Isn't that divine? Isn't that fantastic? Google is completely out of the picture."
   
• Don't give up your own creativity. "Continue to impact your readers, offline and online."

What we can learn from television
Ross Biggam, General Director, Commercial Television Association Europe (ACT), Belgium

In a presentation titled, "Broadcasters' Future Strategies for Advertising (and beyond)," Mr Biggam addressed the issues facing the television industry and how some of these are similar to the situation for newspapers.

TV and newspapers dominate the top two spots for advertising revenue in most
European countries, said Mr Biggam, who also noted that TV and newspapers are both based around selling ads based on quality content and putting money back into creating that content.

While newspapers have faced increased competition from free dailies and other start-ups, television has seen explosive growth in the number of TV outlets. "In 1989, there were 47 channels in Europe, there are now 7200 European TV channels," he said.

However, despite fragmentation, he said the large audiences are still out there as evidenced by hugely successful sporting events. "People still like to watch TV. The average time consumers spent watching television across Europe is still increasing."

To move forward, Mr Biggam said that for television, there is a clear need to diversify, and he said this can be best achieved in the following three ways:

• Look beyond the 30-second spot: new advertising techniques, product placement and split screen advertising.
   
• Auxiliary revenues from programmes themselves, such as selling DVDs.
   
• Develop families of channels. Rather than having one single broadcast channel, have a family of channels offering specific things, such as a sport channel, comedy channel, movie channel, science fiction channel and so on.

Finally, Mr Biggam said "targeted advertising is the next holy grail for European media," however, regulatory issues make this complicated.

Where advertising will go in 2010 - maybe
Adam Smith, Futures Director, Group M, United Kingdom

Mr Smith, who writes the influential "This Year, Next Year" research series for Group M, opened his presentation by admitting something you rarely hear at an industry conference: his forecasts are not infallible.

Though Group M, owned by Martin Sorrell's WPP Group, predicts zero ad growth in 2010, "we media buyers invariably fail to predict 'trend reversals'. The flat advertising demand in 2010 we forecast may well unfold as a recovery," he said.

Despite the low growth predicted, the trends are better than in 2009. And when newspaper display advertising is considered by itself, Mr Smith noted that the scenario was even better.

He warned, however, that structural changes ­ particularly the trend from cost per thousand to cost per action payment models ­ presented serious challenges to the industry. "Do you really want to get into this business?," asked Mr Smith. "You put your entire business at risk ­ you have to continue to place ads until you get results."

So how do you sustain a CPM model in a CPA world? "There will always be a role for newspapers to sell cost per thousand for brand awareness communication," said Mr Smith, who quoted Wired Magazine as suggesting that media can do so by "making ourselves multidimensional" and "resetting the economics" by adding functions to the advertising.

"You already provide the context of editorial wealth and authority for advertising. Your platforms can make ads look better and work better," he said.

Here are some of his other insights:

• Giving premium content away is not a sustainable business model. Without personally advocating paywall models, Mr Smith pointed out that using them would not only provide subscription revenue but also information about subscribers that is highly valuable to advertisers;
   
• Price leadership is vital to newspaper companies because dropping the price won't convince agencies to buy newspaper advertisements if it isn't already part of their campaigns. But innovation in non-price negotiation is crucial ­ over position, colour, and bundling with on-line advertisements, for example.
   
• Newspaper display advertising remains crucial to brand building campaigns. "No viral marketing would exist without proper brand advertising behind it," he said.

What do advertisers want?
Paul-Pierre Doulgerof, Manager Mass Communications, SAS, Denmark

Mr Doulgerof, who works for the sixth largest airline in Europe, offered an advertising customer's perspective on media. The company has completely overhauled its advertising in the past few years to place an emphasis on effectiveness.

"What is successful advertising in my world is: Does it sell any tickets?" Doulgerof said. "Our message was not getting through to the customers, and our ads could be substituted with those of many other airlines."

To develop effective ads, SAS invested in indentifying sales drivers, including data on which media are most effective, and when, both at different times of day and throughout the calendar year.

For example, Doulgerof said, "I can't use social media for sales. There are arguments I can use for TV and print, but I haven't heard of cases in Denmark where social media is leading directly to sales. It can do a lot of things, and it is useful, but not directly for sales."

Thanks to the extensive investment in advertising effectiveness, Doulgerof said "I can show how much every crown that is invested will return. This is specifically for my product, it would be different for Coca-Cola," but ultimately, "if you can document (results), you will prosper. The more I can track, the better."

Year of the mobile at last?
Jan Rezab, Managing Director, Lokola, and CEO, HungryMobile, Czech Republic

Newspaper executives have been waiting for an explosion in mobile revenues for the past few years. Has their time finally come?

"I don't think it's the year of the mobile yet. I think it is going to be a year of preparations and the year of changes in the marketplace. Waiting isn't an option, though," says Mr Rezab.

There are plenty of examples that mobile advertising and other revenue generation models are beginning to take hold. But there are barriers to the market that must be overcome, he says.

"But you have to be there," says Mr Rezab. "If you're not there, someone else will be there. Somebody else will have the icon on the phone, someone else will be pre-installed. Whoever will be the first will have the icons up there. And being installed in the browser ­ you don't have to do any other marketing."

Mr Rezab cited these barriers that need to be resolved before mobile business models are widely viable:

• mobile commerce needs to develop to provide direct impact into sales.
   
• mobile services are needed that will drive traffic into stores, which will pay for the traffic.
   
• localisation opportunities like offering "buy one, get one free" to people who are 200 meters from a sales location have to be developed;
   
• smartphones have to become more widespread ­ and not just iPhones.
   
• mobile advertising has to take off.

Mr Rezab presented an overview of mobile business models ­ paid and free applications, advertising and more – with case studies that illustrated how to make them work.

Among his best practices for paid-for applications:

• Be careful about how you communicate to users when you include advertising with paid-for applications ­ they don't expect it and get angry;
   
• Don't forget that people 'pay' for your mobile web with the time they spend there;
   
• Remember you're not selling your newspaper, you're selling the news ­ drop the features that interfere with what people want from you.

Families are hyper-local social networks
John Bradshaw, CEO, My Family Announcements, United Kingdom

Mr Bradshaw discussed how families can be developed as hyper-local social networks, a simple concept that can revolutionise personal advertising services and revenues.

Bradshaw said it is important for newspapers to build communities to help meet the expectations for interaction that users have today. "People expect so much more from you than just putting text on a flat screen," he said. "Engagement is about leaning forward, you are not sitting back and consuming. Users want to be able to engage with content."

A good place to engage with readers is through life events such as births, birthdays, engagements, weddings, and deaths, which is a natural extension for what newspapers and their websites already do. Bradshaw's solution, My Family Announcements, is aimed at helping publishers make the most of these announcements by encouraging users to contribute photos, messages, give virtual gifts (such as flowers or light a virtual candle).

The Rotherham Advertiser, an 80,000 circulation paper published by Garnett Dickenson in the UK, is one of the papers using Bradshaw's solution.

Commercial Director Nicky Holt described how well My Family Announcements has worked for her newspaper. Rotherham Advertiser went live with My Family Announcements in September 2009, and has seen an increase in 10 percent growth of unique users. She said MFA delivered a turn-key solution in less than two weeks and the newspaper has already seen a 566 percent return on investment.

Dave Martin, the Rotherham Advertiser's Technical Director, discussed some of the potential extensions for My Family Announcements, which include encouraging people who have posted previous event notices, such as a birthday or anniversary, to then post the information on Facebook or Twitter with a single click. Another feature is a reminder system that kicks in 11 months after a birthday or anniversary to remind the person who posted the information that the date is again nearing, and asking if they want to place an advert. This information could then potentially be used to help target advertising with toy stores for children¹s birthdays for example.

Finding new revenue in a cash-poor market
Geert Van Hassal, Managing Director, Impresa Classificados, Portugal

The property market in Portugal eroded and then collapsed, but Impresa Classificados found a way to replace lost classified ad revenue.

"When we saw the steep nose dive, and what was going away, we found that the primary market had completely quit advertising with us," says Mr Van Hassal.

Though the property developers has an enormous inventory of unsold properties, they had no money with which to advertise. But the developers were desperate for exposure – so Mr Van Hassal's company arranged an exchange. It would prove a three-week advertising campaign valued at 300,000-350,000 Euros, and, in return, the developer would give the company a 3-room apartment with a market value of 250,000 Euros.

The developer also agreed to allow the company to give the apartment away in a prize drawing.

The campaign – in print (43 insertions in 17 titles), on TV (three versions of 20-second commercials shown 10 times a day) and on the web (1 million impressions) resulted in 917,000 calls to a special number for those who wanted to enter the prize drawing. At 72 cents for each call, the drawing generated 300,000 Euros in net revenue for the company – about the same amount it would have gained for the advertising campaign.

"So, in the end, we managed an income that corresponds to the real value of the campaign," said Mr Van Hassal. "It is money that didn't come from the advertiser, but from the readers.

"The advertiser was thrilled," he continued. "He had an enormous amount of floor traffic and visitors and his third trimester last year was a success, due to the project. It's a new way to find revenue in a market that doesn't have much money."

Do you want a coffee with your newspaper?
Bozena Rezabova, Marketing Director, PPF, Czech Republic

The traditional business model for newspapers ­ gaining revenue from advertising and sales­ is no longer sufficient, says Ms Rezabova. "The only solution is to find multiple revenue channels," she says.

PPF's Nase Adresa hyperlocal media project has certainly found a unique revenue stream ­ selling coffee and pancakes.

Nase Adresa is a chain of hyper-local weeklies, websites and coffee shops ­ that's where the editors and journalists work, where they meet their audience when people stop for a coffee and a sweet. The papers don't share content ­ each provides only local stories for the small town where they are based.

"There is a need to stand out from the explosion of content out there is a need to stand out and provide something unique," says Ms Rezabova. "But how do you have enough resources to produce the content?"

The cafés are one solution. "It's not because we like coffee so much that we created this chain of cafés. It's because we saw a potential revenue stream," she says.

Another stream comes from the company's Futuroom training centre in Prague, which not only trains its own journalists, but provides marketing, media, journalism and other training to others. It also develops infographics and mobile applications that it sells to other media houses.

Advertising and subscriptions provide 60 percent of Nase Adresa's revenues ­ the rest comes from the web (8 percent), the cafes (18 percent), and from Futuroom (14 percent).

PPF is in the process of rolling out 90 cafés, 150 weeklies and 900 websites. "These cafes will help finance it," says Ms Rezabova. "People can come and just get a coffee, but they also can approach the editor who is sitting in the café, preparing the weekly or working on the website."

Integrating Print and Digital
Howard Scott, Managing Director, Newsquest Division South & West London, and Chairman of JICREG, United Kingdom

Mr Scott explained Locally Connected, a revolutionary new planning and buying tool, hailed as the world's first online, integrated print and digital audience currency.

Formally launched just before Christmas last year, Scott said Locally Connected is a geographical system for analysing the combined net reach of a local newspaper and its website. Locally Connected offers a media portfolio database that is searchable by several categories and offers some 3200 different media opportunities.

In essence, this tool gives advertising buyers the hard data they need to help decide which media mix will give them the best reach for their chosen campaign.

Scott quoted Matt Merrett, Director of Regional Press, UK, as saying: "Locally Connected will give planners a deeper understanding of the reach of regional titles at a local level. We have never before been able to prove what a campaign will get in terms of reach online. This provides the reach online down to postcode level."

"Locally Connected is a ground-breaking development in the UK to do justice to our web products and the impressive audiences we have been building," Scott said.

He added that JICREG is currently in the process of promoting Locally Connected through a "Preach the Reach" campaign, and also looking ahead to its next-stage developments such as adding in information about page impressions, radio audiences and specialist website models.

Consumer behaviour to the "nth" degree
Belinda Beeftink, Associate Director, Media Research, Institute of Practioners in Advertising, United Kingdom

The Touchpoints survey in the UK is the first industry available, multi-media planning system which merges consumer behaviour with media usage data to provide a better understanding of what they do, and when, than the media data alone.

"It is understanding the context of how people consume media, when they consume media, and who they're with when they consume media," says Ms Beeftink. "It's moving away from people as a demographic and thinking about their behaviour and life context."

At the centre of the "hub survey," which is compiled from information collected in a personal digital assistant (PDA)-based diary that asks respondents, every half hour, who they're with, where they are, what they're doing, what mood are they in, and what media they are consuming. This is combined with a questionnaire that queries their attitudes about all media, technology, lifestyle, shopping, travel and more.

"The hub survey sits in the middle. We add all industry metrics for TV, print, cinema, radio, newspapers and magazines, online, SMS, direct mail and search," says Ms Beeftink.

The result is a detailed picture that allows accurate targetting of people during the day, and how they use media at any time ­ "what they're doing, who they're with, how much time they spend in single and multiple activities the whole depth and breadth of real life," said Ms Beeftink.

Touchpoints is now used by 58 companies, 44 agencies, 13 media owners and one advertiser. Stuart McDonald is one of them. As Head of Advertising Insight for News International Commercial in the UK, he described how Touchpoints is used at his company.

"Its one of the few projects that is used across the entire business," he said. "In marketing, where it can be used to determine when is the best time to reach readers of competing newspapers, and with which media. By editorial, which can determine readership by day part. And it is certainly valuable for commercial."

Ms Beeftink provided further examples ­ how it can be used to determine the best time to reach bill-payers, for example. Or to convince advertisers that Sunday is an excellent day to reach shoppers. She said the UK government, the country's biggest advertiser, insists that Touchpoints is used in all communication planning briefs.

"We really couldn't ask for a better advertising endorsement than that," she said.

Time to change the online metrics
Matthew Dodd, Vice President for Research & Analytics, EMEA, Nielsen Online, UK

Matthew Dodd has some good news and some bad news.

The good news is, fast moving consumer goods advertisers are starting to invest in online display advertising.

"The problem is, it's only 2 percent of their total spend," he said.

"Clearly, there is still a lot of work to be done to convince these guys that online is where they want to be."

Mr Dodd said the current accepted method of measuring online advertising ­ the "click through" or direct response metric ­ is "fundamentally flawed" and should be replaced with measures that better reflect brand recognition and return on investment.

"There is zero correlation between click through and ROI," said Mr Dodd. "The click through measure is anachronistic. So why do we continue to use it? Because we're lazy, because brand owners are lazy. We're working to move brand owners away from that measure."

Mr Dodd's presentation focused on Nielsen's approach, which tracks audience panels as they navigate through the web, and questions them about the brand messages they remember, to better measure the elements that drive behaviour and attention. Such measures focus not only on direct exposure but on the "viral" element that the web brings to campaigns.

"We need to look toward the long-term or latent effect of online for building brand beliefs," said Mr Dodd.

"Knowledgeable Persuaders"
A training and development panel discussion

A panel discussion led by the conference joint chairs, Annelies van den Belt and Eamonn Byrne, examined the sales team of the future, and how it will look. Mr Byrne noted that often sales staff comes in one of two general types: "fast-talking persuaders" or "knowledgeable geeks," and asked which of these will be more important for news publishers to have in the future.

Geoff Tan, the Senior Vice President for Strategic Marketing at Singapore Press Holdings, said his company is turning its sales staff into multi-media consultants. "We're not called any more to book an ad for tomorrow, but rather a few months in advance to help plan a campaign," he said.

"When we deal with clients, we must be well equipped," said Altug Acar, Deputy Head of Advertising for Turkey's Hürriyet. "It's not always easy for us to convince agencies that print is still alive and an important medium. One of the best ways to do that is to get well equipped."

"I don't think any geek would persuade me into buying anything," said Geert Van Hassal, Managing Director of Impresa Classificados in Portugal. "A lot of technical elements are not that relevant for the buyer."

Moritz Wuttke, Founder & CEO of NextMediaInitiatives, noted that "it depends on your market. I see many markets in Europe which are not that sophisticated. A lot of campaigns are still planned in silos, if I go there as a geek, the buyer isn't going to understand me. The best is to have a competence centre in-house, but for the individual salesperson to know everything about mobile, everything about metrics, I think is too much."

Tan responded by saying that Singapore Press Holdings was not converting its entire sales team into multimedia specialists. "We have trained a small elite crew ­ like commandos if you will ­ who have 360 degree training, and are not just consultants, but can go out and close the deal. They don't need to know every single detail about every product we sell. We don¹t try to be 360 in totality, but 360 in strategy."

"We are just talking about our perspective," noted Acar, "What about the customer's perspective? If we go out to a customer and we say, 'I'm just the print guy, I don't deal with the other mediums.' We look dumb."

Byrne agreed that sales staff needs to be able to answer reasonable questions about different media, and that publishers have to be aware of the needs of their clients. The best solution is probably "knowledgeable persuaders."

Understanding your audience
Martha Stone, Director, WAN-IFRA Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Project

Ms Stone presented an overview of the SFN "Smart Advertising Department" model, which reflects the best advertising practices drawn from media companies around the world.

The elements include developing training and research, taking a consultative approach to sales, focusing on the audience, developing new products and on
maximising yield.

Ms Stone concentrated her presentation on case studies illustrating how data mining could be useful in all those areas, and how a better understanding of audience was the key to any strategy.

She also discussed the SFN Future & Change study, an annual survey of newspaper executives world-wide on what developments they expect in the next 12 months.

"The idea of developing skills for sales people is one of the top concerns of publishers around the world," said Ms Stone, citing the study. "It is neck-and-neck with the development of journalistic skills. It's on the top of the list."

New business development was also one of the top concerns, she said.

More on the SFN project can be found at http://www.futureofthenewspaper.com

'Show Me The Money' Strategies
Geoff Tan, Senior Vice President, Strategic Marketing, Singapore Press Holdings, Singapore

With 17 newspapers, 120 magazines, assorted web sites, mobile platforms, outdoor, and radio, Singapore Press Holdings has adopted the "3M" approach to advertising sales ­ multimedia, multiplatform and multichannel.

Mr Tan's wide-ranging keynote address examined SPH's "Show Me The Money" strategy, which employs six main elements – cross selling, sales packaging,
leveraging, extending, innovating and trending.

Here are some of the elements he described:

•  It is difficult to present a coherent cross-selling proposition to advertisers when you are offering many products over several media. SPH has solved this problem by organising them into six media categories grouped under one brand ­"SPH onŠ" print, online, mobile, screen (outdoor), ground (events), and air. This makes the various advertising solutions easier to present.
   
• Advertisers seeking specific target groups ­ young people, or professionals, or families ­ can choose from an array of bundled sales packages that are designed to reach those specific groups. Not all media need be used for each group.
   
• New revenue can be found by "leveraging" existing resources. For example, the advertising department created a new 1 million dollar business ­ printing and distributing commercial inserts for clients ­ by taking advantage of spare time on a new Uniset printing machine that was part of SPH's commercial printing operation. The company is also in the process of leveraging its disparate databases into one super database to amalgamate all customer information.
   
• Extending existing products and advertising offerings can create new revenue streams. For example, SPH increased revenue from low-yield advertising pages by "clustering" those pages and attracting advertisers with creative strip ads. It created a magazine-like Christmas supplement called "Luxe" when advertisers expressed a desire for higher quality paper for certain ads.
   
• Innovating with creative advertising formats and paper and ink technology hold opportunities for newspapers. Mr Tan showed a variety of unusual advertising formats, as well as advertisements on translucent paper, inks that glowed or were scented, and even a chip-based video inserted into a magazine. He said the company was exploring "multisensory advertising."
   
• The last category of the strategy is "trending." That means using demographic trends to create new products ­ a supplement and dedicated microsite dedicated to baby boomers because the population is aging, and a new magazine called "Roam," dedicated to the interest in mobile devices.

Summaries by Larry Kilman, WAN-IFRA's Executive Director of Communications, and Brian Veseling, senior editor for Publishing, Editorial and General Management.