While other media groups consider outsourcing their ad production, at today’s Digital News Affairs (DNA) conference Christian Van Thillo, CEO of Belgium’s De Persgroup, explained his group’s reverse strategy.

Having started by outsourcing all advertising, Persgroup has recently brought its ad production in-house.

Its Fred advertising production service is similar to that recently launched by the Telegraph in the UK for online advertisers and targets big brands offering the opportunity to create multi-platform, group wide campaigns.

According to Van Thillo, news providers online face ‘more of an economic challenge than a content challenge’.

Keeping advertising production under group control could help broach this challenge, while helping alleviate fears for jobs raised by outsourcing models.

In this video clip, Van Thillo also talks about how forming early partnerships with other publishers helped to protect and grow their revenues from recruitment advertising (originally 20 per cent of De Persgroep’s total income).

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z1uwplpFK0]