the future of the press - idate
DESCRIPTION
The press online strategiesTRANSCRIPT
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The landscape: print
Distribution of paid publications decreasing Down 4.1% in Europe 2002-2006
Free newspaper circulation increasing (8% of worldwide newspaper distribution)
But vulnerability to advertising market
Average age rising In 2007 in the United States, only 33% of 18-24 year olds and 34% of 25-34 year
olds claimed to read a newspaper one day of the week
Revenues from classified ads falling sharply Down 16.5% in the US in 2007
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Heavy competition on the online news market
TV channel websites are developing
"Web-only" online newspapers
Hazy boundaries of news aggregators
Some press agencies are targeting the end market
Trafic market share does not
translate in audience market share Internet Newspaper websites
Number of page views per internaut 51% 24%
Time spent online 23% 20%
2004-2007 rise in number of page views
and time spent online on newspapers- USA
Rank website Market share
1 Yahoo! News 7.13%
2 The Weather Channel 4.74%
3 CNN.com 3.66%
4 MSNBC 2.97%
5 Yahoo! Weather 2.09%
6 Google News 1.85%
7 New York Times 1.70%
8 Drudge report 1.59%
9 Fox News 1.59%
10 People Magazine 1.36%
Top 10 news and media sites – USA – February 2008
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Online ads not compensating for loss in print ads
Newspapers online ads revenues decreased 2% YoY in Q3 2008
Free newspapers: 1 to 1.5 € per reader/month
Online ads revenues: 0.1 to 0.15 € per UV/month
4 to 5 pages per visit
Online advertising: « lose 10 get 1 »
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10 000
20 000
30 000
40 000
50 000
60 000
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Print Total Online Total
US newspaper advertising revenues(million USD)
55
Sustainable for a web-only news service ?
66
The HuffingtonPost metrics
Created as a blog, now:
Staff: 45
Operation costs: 4 to 5 m$
Breakeven at (theoretically) 4m UV/month
Niche content (politics)
Invest in editing
+ News feeds and blogs
To be compared: Washinton Post: 500 journalists; vast majority dedicated to print. Annual cost of running the NYT bureau in Bagdad: 3m $
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Elements of strategy
Increasing traffic Syndicated content, Google, Facebok, RSS etc…
Getting traffic back on the newspaper website Additional, value added content and services (CityMag, ecommerce etc…)
Improving stickiness Value added web content (moving staff from print to web) Video (first YouTube, then original)
Improving ad placement Not only banners, search Outsourcing placement of unsold inventory to Ads networks Yield management
Saving the classifieds Critical size: partnerships with pure players (eg Yahoo HotJobs) or between
newspapers (eg CareerBuilder)
Building social networks Critical size: partnerships with pure players (eg Topix)
B2B business line ? Corporate communications services
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The impact on print
Strategy 1: Strong investments on print content to differentiate from web offers and maintain prices.
Only for premium newspapers Who can afford ?
Strategy 2: Decrease in prices of newspapers. Ultimately most of them become free
0.50€ targeted newspapers An (unknown) share of the pay-press is already free
Strategy 3: No more daily print; a web-site + a high-end, advertising- friendly magazine
60% of costs come from printing and distribution