Metrics and PR: the commercial future of newspapers
Newspapers – or to be more precise, newsbrands – have to do a better job to sell their story and proposition to agencies, an audience at MediaTel’s The Future of National Newspapers conference was told last week.
After seeing a scene setter market review which highlighted current data and a few future opportunities, largely around tablets, Andrew Mullins, group managing director, Evening Standard & Independent Print proclaimed: “The newspaper industry has crap PR.
“We’re still in a testing phase and we need to be clear on our strategy,” Mullins said. “We’re too protective or under-confident to tell people what we want to do – but the agencies should get behind us and give feedback on what they think will work.”
One of the key barriers to selling their story to clients is the state of industry metrics and currencies used by newsbrands as they take different paths to monetise digital platforms.
Mullins feels newsbrands are selling themselves – or being sold – short when it comes to digital, suggesting that content is losing its value through the transition from print to online.
With newsbrands all operating different models for online access to their content and collecting data in a myriad of ways – with some kept private and some made public – there is not currently a unified currency for buyers.
Yet, the panel – which also included Nick Hewat, commercial director for Guardian News and Media, Dominic Carter, commercial director for News UK, Lewis Shaw, executive director joint head of investment at Manning Gottlieb OMD and the media journalist Raymond Snoddy – agreed that digital consumers are ultimately no different from print ones.
“They are not two different worlds,” said Carter. “The newsbrand is just consumed on different platforms. If an advertiser wants a Times audience, they’ll get it.”
Yet Mullins remains concerned that the numbers are just not up to scratch. “We just don’t have the proof – the metrics – and without them we can’t back a strategy,” he said.
The result, the panel argued, means newsbrands are getting a rough deal online.
“We’re being put out of business,” Mullins said.
Raymond Snoddy agreed, but, highlighting a theme of a recent column, pulled News UK up for failing to share any metrics with the industry.
“News UK’s paywall strategy is a coherent and plausible one, but it’s time to come clean on the numbers,” he said, fearing that hiding them will be damaging in the long-run.
Currently, the industry uses figures from both ABC and NRS to provide circulation and readership metrics, respectively, both online and in print. Yet three years after the Times and the Sunday Times went behind paywalls the industry has little idea what their digital numbers actually are.
There was no teasing a direct answer from Carter, but he did say that a conclusion with ABC would be met “soon.” However, it was revealed that the Times app was downloaded 70,000 on a weekday and 90,000 times on a Sunday.
Problems with metrics aside, was there any other reason why the turbulent move to online was causing such difficulties for the industry?
Since the first newspapers existed in the early 17th century, they have generated profits in a variety of ways – but a cover price and advertising have always been key staples, and, until the rise of the Internet, business models had remained largely unchanged and unchallenged.
Paywalls may seem an obvious route to profit – and something the Independent’s Chris Blackhurst, speaking earlier that day, believed would be prevalent soon enough – but how does a new generation, used to free online news and banner ads, reassess the industry’s value to advertisers?
As Snoddy pointed out: “the industry now needs to convince a lost generation of the benefit of these groups of content creators,” – noting that the average age in media agencies is only 26 years old. However, as Manning Gottlieb OMD’s Lewis Shaw pointed out, his company is aware of the issue and is going to lengths to address it.
But has an entire generation been spoiled by free online news? Has blogging and social media devalued the news content industry?
Perhaps, but Snoddy also noted that much better quality management is now filtering into the industry, largely from outside of it. “Belatedly, the sector has woken up to the state of the problem – but at long last we’re close to a tipping point with new ideas and different models of financing.”
And so too a tipping point has, arguably, also arrived to sort the industry’s consumer PR problem.
Last month, Newsworks, the recently revamped marketing body for the newspaper industry, launched its very first ad campaign aimed at media buyers.
The campaign, ‘Papers aren’t just paper anymore’, sees six ads highlight the distinctive and important role that newsbrands play in people’s lives whilst celebrating the growing audience of what is now a multi-platform industry.
The campaign also seeks to highlight the industry’s “fluid relationship” with social media and the age-old investigative role of newspapers in exploring and exposing current issues. It has been a move widely welcomed, and something Snoddy has campaigned at many previous MediaTel events.
PR, metrics, currencies and new, evolving business models; the future of national newspapers is certainly in a state of flux – and judging by the responses from the conference’s panel, it will remain that way for a while yet, but at least everyone agrees that newsbrands are right to experiment.
To find out about future events from MediaTel, please visit our dedicated events website.