By: Mark Fitzgerald If the U.S. economy falls into a full-fledged recession, newspapers will become more dependent on the only revenue stream likely to keep growing -- cash from their digital businesses, a Gannett company executive predicted at the Audit Bureau of Circulations' (ABC) annual meeting on Thursday.
"Most of us in the newspaper industry believe that digital revenue can continue to grow in that environment," said Bob Dickey, chairman of Phoenix Newspapers Inc. and senior group president of Gannett's Pacific Newspaper Group.
Gannett has already seen Web and other digital revenues continue to grow at their accustomed double-digit rates at newspapers in slumping markets where revenues from traditional sources, such as automotive and real estate have tanked.
At this annual meeting in Chicago -- just seven years short of the Bureau's Centennial -- advertisers, agencies, and publication executives focused on integrating the marketing of print and digital. On panels and in the halls of the Fairmont hotel, attendees spoke feverishly about "engagement" with the audience, though there was no consensus on how to measure "engagement" or even on what, exactly, it means.
"Part of what we do is based on science, part is based on art, and part is based on faith and experience," said David Campbell president and CEO of GroupM Canada, the parent company of several WPP media agencies. Ad buyers and sellers alike now have a vast sea of data generated by users' digital interaction. But numbers alone are not enough, warned Randall Rothenberg, the former New York Times technology reporter who is now president and CEO of the interactive advertising bureau.
"You can't automate that 'ah-ha' moment when you put two and two together and get five," he said.
Advertisers are demanding newspapers and magazines seamlessly integrate print and digital -- and show that their ads drive sales or brand awareness, Rothenberg added.
At The New York Times, for instance, all sales people handle both print and digital, said Martin Nisenholtz, The New York Times Company's senior vice president of digital operations.
"We have integrated marketing pretty much across the board, except for About.com, which is a pure play Internet company," Nisenholtz said.
"We're very flexible. Some want print only, some want online only. Some want both. And we can handle all of them," Nisenholtz said.
The digital sides of the Times' Company's papers are now getting bigger budgets to grow audience than they had just a few years ago, he noted.
Publishers must be careful not to overload advertisers with data, GroupM Canada's Campbell warned.
"When you start moving into very detailed information their eyes glaze over," he said.
And advertisers are looking for something more than "engagement" alone, added Carl Fremont executive vice president and Global Media Director for Digitas, the big digital media buyer.
"Ultimately, what we're looking at is this person spending money on my brand?" he said.
Gannett's Dickey offered his own definition of the meeting's favorite buzzword.
A jeweler friend, advertising for the first time with a quarter-page ad in the Arizona Republic told him that a customer came into the store with the ad ripped from the paper -- and bought the $30,000 piece it advertised
"To me, that's engagement." Dickey said. "It worked for him and it worked for us."
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