The newspaper industry must do more to claw back advertising revenue, claimed Maureen Duffy, the chief executive of the Newspaper Marketing Agency (NMA).
As reported by MediaGuardian, Duffy said that the newspaper industry has been outmanoeuvred by television, radio and outdoor poster companies and only had themselves to blame for failing to stop the migration of other media.
She said campaigns that newspapers used to get, that had brand values, have drifted off to TV in recent years.
Referring to recent research that suggests newspapers were good at promoting simple retail sales adverts but not so good at retaining long-running brand campaigns, Duffy said: “Newspaper have slipped into just being a ‘call to action’ medium.”
The NMA is hoping to drive a multi-million pound industry initiative to promote newspapers, which currently accounts for just 15% of the advertising market.
A study commissioned by the NMA and conducted by Hall & Partners found that newspaper adverts play six strategic roles, including the ‘call to action’ adverts, as well as campaigns that contain too much detail for television, such as mobile phone adverts with tariff rate comparisons.
Duffy said that advertising and media planning agencies did not understand the potential of newspapers. She added: “Often they don’t get beyond the word news – and that’s where newspapers are being pigeonholed.”
Latest forecasts from the Advertising Association says, national newspaper are expected to grow by 2.9% this year, while regional are expected to be up 3.8%. Although this is an improvement on previous years, press is still dragging when compared to outdoor advertising and radio, which is expected to grow by 7.0% and 6.1% respectively (see UK Advertising Expected To Grow by 3.2% in 2004).
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