Tag Archives: Advertising

How Conde Nast is dealing with iPad advertisers

An interesting post on Rob O’Regan’s blog looking at how Conde Nast has developed best practice guidelines for advertisers who want to work on its iPad apps. To create the guidance for clients, the magazine publisher has been conducting extensive research on how readers are using and rating the apps:

To learn more about these early adopters, Conde Nast is combining its in-app and in-person research with usage software built into its apps. Results from the in-app survey showed that 80 per cent of users who downloaded a Conde Nast digital magazine app said the content and experience “met or surpassed their expectations”, and 83 per cent said they were likely to purchase the next month’s edition.

Full story on emediavitals at this link…

New figures show ad revenue decline slowing at Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror

Interim management statements published this week by Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror suggest declines in advertising revenues appear to be slowing for both publishers.

In a statement published today, Trinity Mirror said trading since the half year “has remained volatile due to the fragile economic environment and the uncertainty resulting from the Government spending review”.

The Board envisages that the trading environment will remain challenging over the remainder of the year and into 2011, however, it anticipates that the rate of decline in revenues will improve.

The group recorded declines in ‘adjusted’ advertising revenue of 4.6 per cent year-on-year (excluding the acquisition of GMG Regional Media), but overall the company recorded actual advertising growth of 13 per cent in the 17 week period (including the acquisition).

It added that full ownership of Fish4 will boost its digital recruitment ad revenues by £3 million in the first full year.

This report followed Johnston Press’s statement yesterday which reported a decline in total advertising revenue for the second half of the year to date of 5.4 per cent (year-on-year). This represents an improvement on the first half decline of 6.3 per cent, the report adds.

The decline in print advertising revenues excluding recruitment in the second half to date is 2.5 per cent, with the decline in recruitment advertising in the same period being 29.1 per cent.

In order to reduce costs the publisher announced it would be closing its printing operation in Limerick. A spokesperson told Journalism.co.uk this would impact on 29 part-time workers.

FT Group’s digital subscriptions rise by 50 per cent

Financial Times publisher Pearson has reported an increase of 11 per cent in overall sales for its newspaper operation for the first nine months of 2010, according to a Press Association report.

The FT Group, which according to a report by the FT makes up 15 per cent of turnover, also saw digital subscriptions to its content rise by 50 per cent in the first nine months of 2010 to more than 180,000.

NYT: Privacy is nice, but profit is better

Despite journalists being among those warning of the erosion of privacy in the digital age, it is increasing infringements on privacy that will keep their industry afloat, writes Robert Wright in this New York Times opinion piece.

In fact, the only profitable model for journalism online will be through the continuing removal of privacy and obtaining of information, he suggests.

The further erosion of privacy may be the salvation of journalism – the only way journalists can hope to make a living in the thus-far non-lucrative world of online publishing. As a journalist who harbours such hopes, and has been practising journalism since its glorious tree-based days, I’m in a good position to explain. The willingness of advertisers to spend the money that sustains journalists has always depended on having information about the reader.

…As a member of the late-baby-boom generation, I grew up valuing privacy. But as a journalist with a family to feed, I’m increasingly approving of the very different sensibility of younger people, who seem to have been stripped of self-consciousness by, among other things, Facebook.

The importance of the sharing of data online by communities and the value of targeted advertising as a result was a topic which was also raised at a business-to-business publishing debate at the Association of Online Publishers summit last week.

New figures suggest continued growth for US magazine advertising

Advertising revenue for US magazines continued to increase for the second quarter in a row according to figures released yesterday from the Publishers Information Bureau and posted on the Association of Magazine Media website.

The results for the third quarter of 2010 suggest that rate-card revenue and the number of magazine advertising pages both increased overall compared to the same period in 2009.

The number of ad pages rose by 3.6 per cent following a 0.8 per cent growth in the previous quarter, with a total of 136 magazines reporting a rise in ad pages, compared to 25 magazines in the same period last year. PIB also reported that 132 titles recorded revenue increases this quarter, while only 37 titles did in the same period last year. PIB rate-card revenues were reported to be up by 5.3 per cent.

Reporting on the results the Wall Street Journal said the statistics should give publishers “more hope that the declines that killed dozens of well-known titles in 2009 are behind them”.

Digital ad revenue up 30 per cent at Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal’s latest revenue statistics, detailed in a staff memo from Dow Jones & Company CEO Les Hinton (published on PoynterOnline), show an increase in digital ad revenue of more than 29 per cent.

According to the figures, the publication has recorded year-on-year growth across all platforms in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2011.

Print and online revenues for the publication are reportedly up by more than 17 per cent on the previous year’s figures for the same period, while total print advertising revenue increased by more than 21 per cent.

Print circulation revenue was also reportedly up more than 9 percent, or 13 per cent when including digital.

But while in his memo Hinton makes a comparison to competitor the New York Times Company’s release of revenue statistics last week, paidContent clarifies the potential differences of each in its own report on the figures.

Hinton specifically refers to the New York Times Company’s own figures “as a basis of comparison.” He pointed out that the NYTCo forecast last week that online ad sales would be up 14 percent for the quarter, while print ad revenue would be down five percent. It’s worth noting, however, that those figures include the NYTCo as a whole, while the figures Hinton cites for his company seem to refer only to the performance of the Wall Street Journal.

Sans Serif: Indian newspapers pilot talking ads

Volkswagen is running an ad in two Indian newspapers, the Hindu and the Times of Indian, that talks to readers, Sans Serif writes. A light-sensitive speaker has been added to the paper from which an advertising message is broadcast when triggered.

In some ways its a fairly basic addition, but as Sans Serif points out:

[T]his must be the first time daily newspapers of the size and reach of ToI [Times of India] and Hindu have done it at a time when American newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post are just about coming to terms with the reality of advertisements on the front page.

Full post on Sans Serif at this link…

US newspaper ad revenue decline slows

Advertising revenues for US newspapers declined by more than five per cent in the second quarter of this year – the sixteenth consecutive quarterly decline – but the rate of decline has slowed according to a report by AFP.

Figures published by the Newspaper Association of America this week reportedly show that revenues for online and print newspapers dropped to $6.44 billion from $6.82 billion year-on-year.

Online advertising revenues actually increased by 13.9 per cent, while print print advertising fell 7.62 percent, the AFP report added.

The overall decline was reported as an “improvement” compared to a 9.7 per cent drop in the first quarter of this year and a 23.7 per cent fall in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Hatip: Shaping the Future of the Newspaper blog

Google attempting to woo publishers with advertising plans

In a charm offensive, Google has been posting a series of reports on the future of display advertising. Yesterday’s entry focused on the search company’s efforts to help publishers make money online.

We believe that the new technology we’re developing to make display advertising work better will help to grow the display advertising pie for all publishers, by orders of magnitude. We shouldn’t be asking how publishers can eke another 5 or 10 per cent out of display advertising in the next few years. We should be looking at how the industry can double or triple in size.

Part of the challenge is reducing the administrative costs of display advertising for publishers, says Google, as these currently account for 28 cents of every dollar spent on these ads.

Full post on the Official Google Blog at this link…