The slump in advertising revenue currently being suffered by the global media industry is set to continue in many countries, but this does not overly worry newspaper investors, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Matthew Owen. He feels that the current, cyclical downturn looks worse because of the contrast with the preceding boom time, but says the assumption is that after a difficult 2002, 2003 will be better.
Owen was speaking at the World Association of Newspapers’ annual Newspaper Advertising Conference in Monaco last week. “Over the last two years, we’ve gone through a phenomenon in terms of advertising that we will never see again in our lifetimes,” he said. “We saw an extraordinary bulge in advertising expenditures in 2000 which led to a sharp decline in 2001. The absolute level of advertising this year and in the first two quarters of 2003 won’t be so impressive.”
The purpose of the conference was to provide newspaper industry delegates with ideas for generating revenue during the downturn and with strategies for positioning themselves for maximum benefit when the market rebounds.
One example of this kind of strategy came from Scotland, as Barry Henderson, commercial director of Business am explained how the paper found new revenues in sponsored supplements, business directories and even a new lifestyle section. “It opened up opportunities to attract part of the advertising industry not usually associated with business publications.” he said.
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