Major emerging markets and regions will power the next five years of growth in media and entertainment, and in these rapidly growing markets, growth will come not just from digital but also from traditional media such as television and newspapers, according to an annual media forecast by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Globally, digital media will continue to be the prime driver for growth. PwC defines digital revenue sources broadly, including not just advertising but also consumers buying digital content and digital access. The report finds that:

By 2017, digital revenues (including consumer spending on digital content, digital advertising spending and spending on Internet access) will account for 47% of the total, up from 35% in 2012.

However, digital media is not the only growth story in the report. PwC forecasts that eight core markets – China, Brazil, India, Russia, Middle East and North Africa, Mexico, Indonesia, and Argentina – will see growth rates double that of the entertainment and media sector as a whole over the next five years.

And in many of these markets, especially in Latin America and Asia, television and newspapers will contribute to the growth as well a digital.

Key digital trends for emerging markets

It’s hardly surprising that over the next five years digital entertainment and media will continue to power forward. However, dig more deeply into the global, top-line figures, and media leaders in emerging markets can find a lot of strategic insights.

• Classified advertising – Just as they have in developed markets, the report says that “online classifieds are set to take over from their print equivalents in developing economies in the next five years”.
• Search advertising – On Knowledge Bridge, we’ve covered extensively how targeted search and social media advertising often dominates digital advertising. The report says that search will remain dominant with an important caveat. If Google is not a major player in your market, search advertising isn’t necessarily the king of digital advertising.
• Mobile access – The future is not only digital but mobile – and we cannot stress this enough. Emerging markets are playing a huge role in this shift. “Brazil, China, India and Russia alone will account for 45% of fixed-broadband subscriptions and 50% of mobile Internet users by the end of 2017,” the report found.
• Mobile advertising – Do not be timid about embracing mobile because you don’t see the advertising opportunity. “Mobile advertising is finally set to take off properly, with growth forecast across all regions over the next five years,” according to the report, and by 2017, mobile advertising will account for 15 percent of all internet advertising revenues.

Traditional media to continue growth in emerging markets

While digital access, content and advertising will be one of the highest areas of growth over the next five years, growing middle classes in emerging markets will also drive growth in revenues for traditional media including television and newspapers, especially in rapidly growing markets in Asia and Latin America.

Thus far, TV has been very resilient to the digital disruption rocking other media sectors such as newspapers, magazines, music and books. As the PwC reports says, it continues to deliver not only the mass audiences but also the attention that advertisers crave. The next five years will see little change in that. Free-to-air terrestrial channels will continue to deliver the bulk, 70 percent, of TV revenues, only down a few percentage points from the current mix.

Again, the only real news here is that emerging markets will see the fastest growth. Kenya, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Nigeria will see the fastest rise in TV advertising revenues. Indonesia, Kenya, Thailand and Vietnam will see the fastest growth in terms of pay TV subscriptions.

Another important trend that the report highlighted for emerging markets is the opportunities for regional media to reach diaspora audiences. As Jeff John Roberts says in paidContent, tapping into diaspora audiences in mature markets can be a rich source of revenue for emerging market media players. He highlighted this from the report:

As expatriate communities grow, distributors are increasingly crossing geographical borders to address them. Examples include iRoko, which targets the African diaspora in wealthier markets and has more customers in London than Lagos.

Television advertising hasn’t moved online quickly, and PwC thinks that it is wrong to over-estimate the shift from traditional paid TV delivery systems, such as cable, to so-called over-the-top (OTT), internet-carr lanedelivered services. OTT services will remain a small portion, only 6 percent, of paid TV revenues by 2017.

The digital transition has not been so kind to newspapers, and it is important for publishers to note the shift from print to online classified advertising even in emerging markets. However, newspapers will continue to grow over the next five years across Asia and Latin America. Growth in Brazil, India, China and Indonesia will offset declines in newspaper circulation in mature markets such as the US, UK, Japan and Germany.

Leverage data to benefit from the multi-screen shift

PwC painted a picture of a connected but also a confused consumer. Digital has increased consumer choice, but Roberts at paidContent said:

the report (citing people in Singapore who pay for pirated content even though a legal version was available for free) also suggests that the volume of content is leaving consumers “confused.”

With so many choices, customers might be confused, they might be overwhelmed by the options to them, but the level of choice has led them to expect “my media” rather than “mass media”. The future is increasingly one of multiple screens – TV, tablets and smartphones – but this will pose challenges to media companies. To deliver this personalised content and also targeted advertising to consumers, media organisations will have to constantly innovate, especially when it comes to data about their audiences. Again, Roberts pulled this highlight out of the report about the type of data that media companies will need to use:

granular, small data— derived through analytics—that gives insights into customers’ actual and likely behavior in response to a particular message or experience.

It will not be enough to know who your audience is but also what they are likely to do. As advertisers look to increase the return-on-investment for their clients, they will want to know not just the size of your audience and their interaction with your content but also much richer behavioural data. This is why Amazon has just announced that it will be leveraging its vast mountain of e-commerce data to help target advertising.

While paid content has been a major focus in the past year, PwC still sees a huge opportunity for advertising revenue, but media companies will only realise this opportunity if they embrace a multi-platform approach that leverages not only content but also customer data.

The seminar presented the following topics:

• “Market Overview”. This section provided an overview of the online classifieds market with special focus on recent developments in the Russian and Ukrainian markets. The overview also discussed current trends in global online classified and directory development and presented strategic models for local media to participate in the online classified market.
•  “Business Models: Classified and Directory”. This section presented the common technical and design features common to most online classified sites and then presented a staged approach to building revenue models.
• “Listings and Sales”. A discussion of techniques needed to build the listings volume for an online classified site.
• “Audience/Marketing”. A discussion of SEO and other techniques to generate audience to an online classified site.

The goal of the seminar was to create a base of understanding of the trends in the online classified market and the potential impacts on attendee’s existing classified business as well as provide some tools and techniques to help build listings volume and audience for attendees’ existing classified sites.

Location: Moscow, Russia

Dates: 1 -2 April 2013

Attending:  Russian and Ukrainian media executives

There is hardly a week that passes by when we don’t read of some bad news or other about the media industry. More and more papers are reporting circulation declines and many have cut down on the number of publication days.

Just this month, a business information analyst, IBISWorld, reported that revenues for newspaper publishers in Australia are expected to drop by 4 per cent this year – from $6.7 billion to $6.4 billion. IBISWorld general manager Karen Dobie was quoted as saying:

Declining circulation over the past five years, caused by time restraints, the rising popularity of new media like the internet, pay-TV, and mobile devices, and competition from consumer magazines has continued to have an adverse affect on the industry.

That story is not unfamiliar to newspapers worldwide. While the declines in the US and Western Europe are well known and well reported, those regions are not alone is seeing print circulation decline. A recent report by the International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circulation showed that from 2010 to 2011 declining print circulation even spread to the Asian giants of China and India, which had been seen as bright spots in terms of print as rising affluence and literacy increased newspaper sales.

Revenue following circulation declines

As print circulation comes under pressure, sadly revenue follows it. Indeed, new media has taken a huge toll on one particular area for newspapers – the classifieds pages.

What once used to be referred to as “rivers of gold” has slowed down to a trickle, with consumers preferring to check out classifieds online where searchability is the prime selling factor.

Not so long ago, for example, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Saturday paper was packed with 120 pages of classifieds. But today, it is much less than half that. Classifieds for property, cars and jobs have migrated online with a vengeance.

Newspapers are, in large part, to blame for this predicament.

For years, they stubbornly refused to put their classifieds online, giving non-traditional players such as Craigslist, eBay and new entrants such as iProperty, PropertyGuru.com.sg and carsales.com.au.

iProperty has sites in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, The Philippines and India, and in some cases multiple sites in one country – all targeted at taking away a slice of revenue from print media.

It has diverted some of the revenue from Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), which owns more than 10 newspapers in Singapore. For many years, its flagship paper, The Straits Times, refused to put its classifieds online for fear that if classifieds were available online, few would advertise in the printed paper.

Meanwhile, other hitherto unknown players entered the market. For nearly a decade, they were allowed to grow with little fightback from the SPH group.

“Our online competitors have grown strong through the years. In fact, for some of them, we had allowed them to grow,” SPH’s vice president and head of its online classifieds, Johnson Goh, confessed at the Digital Media Asia conference held in Kuala Lumpur last November.

SPH saw its classifieds’ revenue decline while, at the same time, the number of adults using online classifieds doubled since 2005.

Newspapers begin to fight back

Last year, the group decided to act.

“If our classifieds were going to lose business to online players anyway, there was no reason why we should not have our own sites,” Mr Goh said.

SPH devised a strategy to fight back. It reorganised its classifieds team into print and online, repositioned its classifieds strategy, and rebranded the various products.

In June last year, it launched the first of several vertical, or niche, businesses. STJobs, a recruitment and employment site, took off, followed by STCars, STProperty and a general classifieds site, STClassifieds.

It was a resounding success, said Mr Goh. STJobs has chalked up 10 million pageviews since it was launched.

Media groups go global with classifieds

Similar stories of newspapers coming late to the party can be found around the world – and some are success stories too.

Sweden’s Schibsted is a case worth studying for those interested in the online battle. A major publisher of newspapers including Norway’s biggest paper, VG, Schibsted has gone into online classifieds aggressively. Its aim is to be the No.1 online classifieds site in the world.

In the spring of 2008, Schibsted brought all its online classified companies into Schibsted Classified Media.

Already hugely successful with its Blocket.com classifieds site in Sweden, the company decided to take the model around the world. It launched Blocket or Blocket-like sites throughout Europe.

Today its European operation has become the leading online classifieds business.

Not content to sit back, Schibsted has set up operations or entered into partnerships with local groups in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

The sites take on distinctly local names, such as ayosdito in The Philippines, chotot.vn in Vietnam, liaomaimai.com in China, sahipasand.com in India and mudah.my in Malaysia.

SCM’s annual report for 2011 says gross operating revenue rose to €264.1 million from €213.7 the year before. Of this, the international business generated €75.1 million.

South African media giant, Naspers, too has employed a similar strategy. Early during the online boom, Naspers bought into TenCent in China. Today, TenCent is one of the biggest players in China, and in terms of sheer size and numbers, in the world.

Naspers has moved rapidly into a range of products including Russia’s Mail.ru, Brazil and elsewhere, with classifieds offerings such as Dealfish, Gadu-Gadu, kalahari.com, lelong, PayU, PriceCheck, Sanook!, and TravelBoutique Online.

Clearly, it is no longer the local market or even hinterland countries that is attractive to some of these major players. The world, indeed, is their oyster.

The key challenge facing media in the developing world, especially print media, is to decide how to respond to this digital transition. There are two key questions, the answers to which will help create a successful response.

• Are classifieds or their close relation directories important to your business today?
• What unique strengths can your organization use to compete online?

The answers to these two questions should guide media companies in markets where the transition from print to digital classifieds is underway.

Media companies around the world have used the power of their printing capabilities and their audience reach to build print classifieds into a key revenue stream for their news business.   In some media houses, classified revenue contributes a substantial portion of topline revenues but, more importantly, bottom line profits. These profits have been essential in supporting the public service mission of journalism. For instance, when an import/export firm in Hong Kong pays the South China Morning Post to place a recruitment ad for an accountant, they are in part subsidising the cost of the paper’s newsroom.  When this type of cross-subsidy is substantial, a news media house must think carefully about how to respond to the inevitable pressure that online classified competitors bring.  How these classified-oriented media houses respond will be in part a function of how they answer the second question about their competitive strengths.

Media houses that do not have a traditional classified business may think that they don’t have a problem because they have no classifieds revenue to lose. But they still need to develop income from their online activities, and building a digital media business is not easy. Most successful digital media strategies include revenue from multiple sources, some from advertising, some from paid content, some from syndication, perhaps some from online classifieds. Zenith Optimedia, a global advertising research firm forecasts the global online classified market to grow to over $14 billion by 2015.  So, problem? No.  Opportunity? Perhaps.  How your media house responds to the online classified opportunity will also reflect the answers to the second question.

Honestly evaluate your competitive strengths

When answering question two, two phrases stand out – “unique strengths” and “compete”.   The classified business is a simple business.  People have things to sell to other people who want to buy them or, in the case of a company who needs to hire staff, companies have jobs to offer to people who want new jobs.  It is an exchange.

There are two types of classifieds markets that have been shown to work well: high volume markets where a lot of people have a lot of things to exchange, and niche markets selling items that are otherwise hard to find. Classifieds sections for jobs, cars, apartments or used PCs tend to be high volume markets, with a large audience of buyers attracting a large audience of sellers, which in turn attracts more people looking to buy. Such markets, once established, become self-perpetuating.

To evaluate your opportunity, you need to candidly evaluate your company’s strengths in an online classified competition:

• Existing Business – Does your company operate a classifieds marketplace offline?  Have you built a successful exchange for goods and services offline that you can build upon to compete online?
• Audience – Can you provide more potential buyers to the online classified site than the online competition?  Do you have the media reach that allows your company to build an audience of potential buyers at a lower cost than another competitor?
• Sales – Can you provide more potential sellers to the online classified site?  Does your company have a unique ability to sell advertisers into the online classified site?
• Technology – Does your company have unique understanding of how online classified buyers and sellers use technology that will allow your company to build the best “product”?  Perhaps most of the online classified competitors in your market are focused on building websites, when most buyers and sellers rely on their mobile phones?
• Reputation/Brand – Does your company have a strong reputation or a unique brand in the market?  Will buyers and sellers be more likely to trust your company with their exchange than they might a new online only company?
• Unique Knowledge – Is there something unique about your market that gives you unique understanding about how buyers buy and sellers sell their products? The internet has not only forced a transition from traditional media to digital media; it has also created new specialty markets for buyers and sellers that never existed before. Fivrr.com, a specialty site where people exchange small jobs online for five US dollars, has become one of the most successful new classified sites in the last few years.  According to Alexa, Fivrr today is one of the top 500 sites in the world and among the top two hundred sites in countries as diverse as Sri Lanka (#47) and Australia (#62).

Survey the competitive landscape

How to deploy these strengths will be a function of the competitive environment.   In many markets, online classifieds competitors rely on technology as their main strength.  They build a single online site that can be easily expanded to any region or category of goods, for example,  Avito in Russia and Quikr in India.  Other competitors will focus on a particular category, like recruitment, real estate, or automobiles and build a national online site for that category, such as  PropertyGuru in Malaysia and Rabota.ua in Ukraine.  Usually both approaches will exist in a market at the same time.

Another question to consider is whether your market’s size or location provides some insulation from national online classified competitors.  Most classifieds markets are about building the largest exchange of buyers and sellers, and online classifieds are no different. This means that national competitors often focus on metropolitan regions with large populations and easy access to the internet.

This leaves opportunities to create niche local or specialized classified marketplaces.  These opportunities are often found in smaller markets with high internet penetration or, in a non-geographic strategy, very focused interest groups may also develop an online classified site.   One example of a successful specialty classified site is the BandMix.com which, with its partner site ReelMix.com, focuses on the special needs of musical bands or film crews recruiting for talent.

When you are assessing the market, you must be clear that there is an opportunity there to be exploited. If the market is already too competitive or your organization’s strengths do not match the requirements of the market, then this may not be the best opportunity for your company.

Choosing a strategy

After evaluating the online classified competitors and determining whether your organization has unique strengths needed to succeed in the market, you will need to develop a strategy.  There are four types of strategy, each of which build on an understanding of your company’s unique strengths and the competitive environment.

• Traffic Sponsorship.  In this strategy, the media company creates a partnership with a leading online classified site to provide traffic, to build the number of buyers and sellers on their exchange.  This strategy is the least risky.  Media companies pursuing this strategy often face multiple, well-established online classified competitors.  In this case, the partnership offers the online classified competitor access to the traffic of the company’s news site. The online classified site almost always pays some base fee for the traffic and then perhaps a bonus if the traffic levels reach pre-set goals. MalaysiaKini’s relationship with the PropertyGuru is a good example of this type of strategy.
• Sales and Marketing Partnership with Online Classified Sites.  In this strategy, the company’s partnership expands to include not just traffic.  This partnership builds on the media house’s sales and marketing capabilities to promote the online classified partner and to sell advertisers into the online classified site.  Similar to Traffic Sponsorships, media companies choosing this strategy face strong online classified competition.  But, in addition to online traffic, they also bring strong sales and marketing skills.  The New York Times chose this approach when it partnered with Monster, the global online recruitment classified company.
• Build Your Own Online Classified Site.  In this strategy, the company elects to choose its own technology to create an independent online classified site.  The technology chosen can either be built or bought from a specialty online classified software company, like FlyNax or MarketGrabber.  But the company’s ability to choose or build and then maintain its own classified software creates a significant new level of risk.  This approach assumes that online competition is still limited or that the company has unique strengths in technology, sales and marketing or some unique market understanding will result in a successful online classified launch.  AltaPress in Barnaul, Altai, Russia pursues this strategy with their online site KP22.ru, an online classified companion site to their successful print classified newspaper Kupi Prodai.
• Build a Network for Your Online Classified Site.  In this strategy, several traditional media companies or a media holding company which owns several traditional media creates their own online classified site.  This is the most risky strategy involving both the risk in the choice and maintenance of a technology platform as well as the risk created by linking multiple different media companies, each with different strengths and goals for the online classified site.  The choice of this strategy often reflects a rapidly changing market where media companies have a significant stake in the traditional print classified industry.  They have strong traditional classified brands, well-trained sales and marketing teams and a good foundation in technology. By pooling these strengths, they believe that they can create the necessary scale to successfully compete with larger national online classified companies.

Each strategy includes a number of different ways to capture potential online classified opportunities, but every media company will need to customize and adapt the strategy to their unique strengths and market situation.  As new strengths are built and the competition reacts to shifts in the market, you should review and evolve your ongoing classified strategy to stay ahead of the game.

Classifieds is perhaps the oldest form of advertising.  Although technology has changed the dynamics of the equation, the equation remains the same.  Almost every community has their version of a classified “site”, whether it is on their mobile device, on their PC, in print or on a real bulletin board in a local café.  The goal is to bring people together to create value for all, a mission not too dissimilar from the goals of any media company.

To take advantage of this growth in internet advertising, we explore how to organise and motivate your sales team. Advertising sales is fundamentally about solving problems for your advertisers by providing them with products and an audience, at prices they are willing to pay.

In the next presentation we look at key sales concepts including:
• Calculating your potential advertising market.
• Identifying sales channels.
• Strategies for making money in print (or broadcast) and online.
• Motivating your sales force.
• Organising digital sales.

After looking at how to organise and motivate your sales teams, we look at two types of digital advertising: ad networks and classifieds. As we wrote about recently in the August Digital Briefing, ad networks can be an important source of early income as you grow traffic to your site.

Although a couple of large ad networks get the lion’s share of the attention, there are more than 300 ad networks out there, with some focused on specific platforms or technology such as mobile or video ad networks, some focused on specific geographical areas, others focused on specific themes or types of content such as the Active Youth Network and even others focused on audience behaviour online.

Ad networks help address a number of issues facing advertisers such as the large choice of publisher sites leading to an over-supply of ad space, and the difficulty of identifying high-quality content.

In the next presentation, we look at different ad network pricing models and how to choose the right ad network.

We look at classified advertising, beginning with a cautionary tale about the collapse of online classifieds as a revenue source for newspapers in the US. New online classified players such as Craigslist, Monster.com and HotJobs.com all helped to shift classified advertising from newspapers to new digital players. We look at how to develop your digital classifieds offering to prepare to defend yourself against new digital competitors.

Online classifieds include not only the “Big Three” of classified advertising – recruitment (jobs), real estates/rentals and auto – but also directories, free classifieds and calendars. Specialist classified providers that focus on dating, education or other types of products and services have also sprung up. Online classified advertising is in the early stages of development, but it still represents a potentially large market and has already attracted a number of large, international players.

We then cover several different strategies for developing your online classifieds business, including:
• Go it alone: building, selling and marketing your own classified advertising site.
• Build a network with other local media.
• Partner with a national site, which provides the technology and perhaps marketing and sales service, leaving you to focus on local marketing and sales.
• Enter into a traffic partnership, which means that you sell a traffic sponsorship deal to a national partner.

We look at examples of these strategies and how to organise your business to achieve success using one of these strategies.

Of course, digital advertising is a fast moving sector, so we also look at new developments and the future of the online classifieds.

In the final presentation, we look at how news organisations are using social media to generate revenue, either indirectly by using it to grow audiences and gain more data about their audiences, or directly by selling social media advertising.

The Seminar presented the following topics:

• “Online Advertising Market Overview”.  An overview of the dynamics of the Russian and Ukrainian online advertising market including market size and growth. The training focused on presenting the standards for online display advertising as well as an overview of standard pricing models.  A short discussion of ad serving systems was also included.
• “Sales Teams Organization and Motivation”.  A discussion of different approaches to sales organization and motivation as well as a discussion of integrated, independent, and hybrid online sales teams.
• “Advertising Networks”.  Training provided an overview of the structure of advertising networks as well as a discussion of the pros and cons of participating in advertising networks like Yandex Direct and Google AdSense.
• “Measuring Success – Google Analytics”.  An overview of the fundamentals of using Google Analytics to measure traffic growth and understand basic audience demographics and behavior.
• “Online Classifieds – Local Opportunities”.  Online classifieds often represent the largest category of traditional local media advertising and are often the first category to move online.  The training focused on the elements of the online classified market and techniques of managing the transition from print to online classifieds.

The goal of the seminar was to provide a common base of knowledge about the opportunities in online advertising both display and classifieds.  The seminar also encouraged discussion among participants about the pros and cons of different online advertising techniques and the potential impact on the traditional advertising business.

Location: Moscow, Russia

Dates: 27 – 28 September 2012

Attending:  Russian and Ukrainian Media Advertising Sales and Marketing Executives

• The music industry is about half the size of its peak in 2000.
• In just five years, Amazon increased its global sales from $10.72bn to $44.1bn in 2011, according to Retail Week.
• In the US, newspaper advertising has been cut in half since it peaked in 2005.

Digital media consultant and ex-newspaperman Alan Mutter says that the digital disruption of retail didn’t just coincide with the decline in newspaper advertising but is linked. He sees the next threat to newspaper revenue coming from a potential in “preprint advertising”. Preprint ads are glossy advertising inserts produced by major national retailers in the US, and according to one source quoted by Mutter, they account for, on average, 70% of advertising revenue at US newspapers. Over the past five years, preprint advertising has grown to become a larger percentage of advertising for US newspapers. However, that much needed source of revenue is now under threat by changes in retail. Mutter says preprint revenue is under threat because:

The digital revolution, which is (a) unraveling the business models of many of the big-box retailers who historically have been the biggest buyers of preprint advertising and (b) encouraging even healthy bricks-and-mortar retailers to shift from high-priced print advertising to targeted and inexpensive digital formats.

Some retailers are even foregoing traditional advertising and going directly to consumers via their own websites, email offers and social media, Mutter ads. He adds:

Even thriving bricks-and-mortar retailers today are trying to improve the efficiency of their marketing by seeking low-cost and highly targeted advertising options.

This is why advertisers and advertising revenue has shifted to innovative new advertisers such as search-based advertising and social networks. As the Economist noted last year, in 2000, Google only captured 1 percent of advertising spending, but now it captures almost half. Google now earns more than the entire US newspaper industry. Facebook is in the process of rolling out a new advertising service that will allow companies to “target their ads to existing customers based on their phone numbers and e-mail addresses”, according to technology news site CNET.

Disrupt your own business before others do

Over the last five years, many news organisations have done a good job of delivering editorial innovation, but they still lag behind digital competitors in terms of delivering advertising innovation. One key lesson is that it is better to disrupt your own business before others do.

Some news groups, such as Scandinavia’s Schibsted, noticed the trends in other markets early, and moved to invest in digital advertising solutions. Newspapers in the US blame online classified service Craigslist of killing their classified business, but Schibsted used them as inspiration. Craigslist launched in 1995, and to compete with online classifieds in their own market, Schibsted launched classifieds site Finn.no, even though it went head-to-head with the group’s newspapers. Finn.no was spun off in March 2000. In a 2010 interview with Businessweek, Schibsted’s Chief Executive Officer Rolv Erik Ryssdal said

We weren’t afraid to cannibalize ourselves

Schibsted bought Blocket.se in 2003, and it is now one of the five largest sites in Sweden. In 1997, the company launched another classified sites focused on car sales. The site, Bytbil.com, is now used by 95% of all car dealers in Sweden. The company has classified advertising sites in 20 countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America, and in 2010, its classified business was the third largest globally, trailing only Craigslist and eBay.

Schibsted realised early on that digital advertisers are looking for ads that perform, and if you don’t deliver that, someone else will.

Data: Delivering better editorial and more revenue from advertising

Digital technology also allows you to know who your audiences are. That’s good for editorial staff in that they can better serve the needs and interests of their market, but data is also extremely important in delivering relevant audiences and higher performance to advertisers. Advertisers want to send very targeted messages, but you can’t help them achieve that if you don’t know who your content reaches. It is essential to invest in technology and market research so that you know your audience better. In September, we’ll be looking at how to generate higher returns via advertising and data-driven techniques to get better ad performance.

The key is that you need to focus your digital innovation efforts and resources not just on delivering editorial innovation but also advertising and revenue innovation. In digital media, you’re not just competing against other news organisations for audiences, but also social networks and search engines for ad revenue.