The future of newspapers
Abba Newbery, News International commercial director of advertising strategy, says we need to re-consider the short-term trading conditions of national press and change our day-to-day trading model…
For many decades we published stories in a single, simple way and competed with a finite set of alternatives for both consumer attention and advertising spend. Today, we publish in many formats and compete with a much wider set of rivals – all bidding for their share of each person’s potential 24 hours of consumption!
It’s a challenging time for newspaper businesses but also full of opportunities. More than just news, we offer our customers the opportunity to enjoy different points of view, in-depth analysis, discussion and debate – and to participate too. Above all, we help to set the agenda and steer the conversation, whether in print, online, social forums or around the water-cooler. Through our quality content we create frequent valuable relationships. And we want to keep increasing both the number of interactions and the number of people.
To aid this, we speak on a regular basis to more than 8000 people through our App Tracker research, asking them about their technological behaviour. We want to evolve our commercial model to give our readers and advertisers more ways to interact with each other. The aim is to identify and serve readers with ‘the next instalment’ of the content they have been reading as well as serving them with highly effective advertising that is both relevant and personalised. We call it the ‘synchronisation of content’ and this way of thinking means fundamental changes to not just how and what we publish but also how and what we charge for advertising.
Inevitably, change causes uncertainty. Already there is a lot of debate about whether tablets and mobiles should be bought and sold as one media channel and we note that their use seems to be driven by different behaviours. Mobile, for example, is used consistently through the day as readers opt to snack on the latest content on-demand. Sessions are short and so, more than ever, advertising should be highly targeted and relevant. Compare this then with tablet usage which has spikes in the morning, as well as in the afternoon and evening, where in particular we see readers looking for an immersive blend of news and entertainment.
So much for day-parts, what about engagement times? Well, mobiles and tablets differ again. Our readers spend on average 47 minutes per day with our table content – very similar to the 55 minutes spent with our newsprint content but way in excess to the average figure of just six-and-a-half minutes spent each day on the web or mobile device. It seems clear that the linear reading offered by tablets provides a more immersive experience than the ‘dipping in and out’ layout of the web.
As you can tell, data is rapidly becoming a critical part of our publishing and planning process. You only need to visit our newsrooms for evidence of this. They are now fuelled by real-time dashboards that let us know our live traffic figures, exactly what is being read, where our readers are coming from and what is being commented on. It really is a different world!
We appreciate that we are still in the early stages of developing a viable digital model across all of our channels. It is therefore vital for us to be able to work with partners who are prepared to experiment with us; who will champion emerging channels like the tablet; who want to learn as we do; and who understand that we need to continually update our ad proposition in tandem with the publishing product.
Change goes way beyond our newsrooms though. We now have whole departments dedicated to NPD (new product development) for the simple reason that we cannot afford to have long, drawn-out development programmes. We need to move fast and at any given time we have multiple “concepting” projects on the go. Again, we need much more input from our commercial partners to help with this process and ensure that what we are “concepting” is commercially realistic and appealing.
To take full advantage of our suite of products we need to re-consider the short-term trading conditions of national press, and change our day-to-day trading model. We need to create systems that truly allow for automated booking, and price our advertising based on relevant audiences delivered rather than size of advertisement.
Right now we see our readers at their most curious and their most explorative. They are hyper-engaged – and expect to be rewarded with entertaining, informative and interactive advertising. Whatever their behaviour, whatever changes yet lie ahead, we aim to deliver just that.