Search results matching tag 'down turn'

So long Exchange & Mart

255762 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:37:00 GMT

Exchange & Mart had a very small print circulation with barely 20,000 and falling, but its closure in print and move to online only publication is a story that is set to be repeated over and over this year. Quite how much is anyone's guess.

With its position as a classified title the closure of Exchange & Mart in print is perhaps less of a surprise than many similar closures. The decline of the classified ad market that hit specialist titles like Exchange & Mart, as well as regional and national newspapers alike. It has spared no one and is only going to get worse. Eighty jobs are under threat at the auto classified title which adds to the hundreds already lost and under threat in the regional press within the last few months at titles like the Northern Echo where staff are considering strike action as they are elsewhere at titles like the Yorkshire Post.

The problem with some of these closures and cuts is that some like Exchange & Mart appear to be the only option. There is very little future in the print classified market. Regional newspapers generally, however, appear in some places to be put to the sword, which is probably why one independent local newspaper group, the Wigan Courier, has called online advertising a “digital fad” that will pass and there is “still no substitute” for a colourful local newspaper ad. More likely it is just a cheeky grab for publicity.

Managing director Mark Ashley told Press Gazette: “The Courier is bucking the current trend for regional newspapers, which has seen a year of contraction, circulation losses, job cuts and cutbacks.

“We believe that readers and advertisers want a mass distribution, colourful, effective newspaper that focuses on all the good things about our local Wigan community, and that the current obsession with internet advertising and Facebook will gradually go the way of all the digital fads over the last few years."

That said the signs of change in magazine and newspaper publishing are evident in all markets. We've all seen it. At the end of last year Ziff Davis Media closed the print edition of its once flagship title, PCMag, after 26 years and will publish the magazine online only.

That followed on a larger scale the news that the Christian Science Monitor was to close down and going online only and CosmoGirl while the Sporting News and US News & World Report cut their print frequency and put more focus on the web.

In the B2B sector, there are a number of examples, but close to hand at Haymarket, which owns Brand Republic, Marketing Direct and Promotions & Incentives have gone online only. They will not be the last in the B2B sector either, which has also been hit hard by the decline of the ad market.

And the truth as we have already witnessed is that online is no safe haven. The truth that has revealed itself is that the expected hand in hand growth of revenues and traffic has not happened. Traffic for many sites big and small has soared, but the revenue is not growing at anything like the same rate.

The web posted annual growth of 29.5% in 2007 and 20% in 2008 digital ad spend in 2009 is expected just 2.1%, according to Enders Analysis forecasts.

This is why this week you have had ITV writing down the value of Friends Reunited, concluding that the site is worth less than the £175m it bought it for.

ITV like a lot of media companies look unlikely to hit online revenue targets the projections for which were based on much higher growth rates than we are now living with.

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GroupM revises web ad revenue down sharply in 2009

255762 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:20:00 GMT

WPP's GroupM has reduced its forecast for headline UK internet ad growth dramatically from 20% to 4% for 2009. That's huge almost too huge.

It does temper this by saying that some of the fall is due to a maturing internet market and not all is downturn related, but still. The radical predictions for next year compare to 27% in its May forecast to 22% in 2008.

The report says that demand for paid search and online display is still good, but paid search growth has been slowing markedly across 2008 and display is subject to price deflation as more activity becomes cost-per-action or 'performance'-based. That's as it should be, CPA and CPP are how things should be done.

Better news GroupM says is that premium display inventory, which includes pre-roll, high-quality publishers and portals; cost-per-thousand-based rather than cost-per-action, remains in strong health, but advertiser arbitrage between per-thousand and per-action chains their respective pricing.

Premium display is typically used by larger brand advertisers, which means they are maintaining high profile usage campaigns and not cutting back online as some other reports have suggested.

GroupM does not see any sudden recovery (saying only it remains possible) because it says consumer retrenchment is simply too deep to make this likely in 2009.

However, like Sir Martin Sorrell (I recently blogged about how he expected a bounce back sooner, rather than later), GroupM does see some conditions are already improving. It points to the monetary and fiscal taps are at least open (by the US government and its $700bn bailout plan), even if the flow is sluggish.

Overall online and offline, GroupM suggests that only the US is likely to shed more ad dollars than the UK, which is going to be hard hit (as if we haven't already seen this in the tsunami of media job cuts).

"This has been a classic, hard-to-predict 'trend reversal' from our own springtime hopes of 3% UK media growth next year, with sentiment falling fastest alongside the grim September/October newsflow. Every medium is affected, and indeed nearly every country including the fast-growing BRIC/Next 11 as our forthcoming global forecast will show."

Sorrell: bounce back sooner than you think

255762 — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:44:00 GMT

Writing in The Times today Sir Martin Sorrell makes his case for the economic bounce back coming sooner than other think (2009 he says) although the piece could have benefited from last minute editing regards India.

The WPP chief executive plumps for 2009 as opposed to others saying 2010 or even 2011. He says sooner because "the market is missing the extent of the fiscal stimulus that the Obama administration is expected to announce. It will be colossal – the number $500bn has started to appear in the past few days – although, for it to work, people must act together and not independently".

Looking at the emerging four Bric economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – he says India will do best next year.

The piece was clearly written before the Mumbai terror attacks and it is difficult to tell what impact they will have on business and investment the in Indian economy as people get nervous.

The case for these Bric economies, however, is undoubtedly strong as an indebted Europe, UK and US falters leaving the way open for the four to emerge.

WPP has long invested in the emerging markets and pegged future growth prospects to them.

In the article he compares Western Europe to "an ageing company with huge healthcare and pension liabilities that are difficult to fund" and because of this he says for WPP "there is no point in continuing to invest in Western Europe unless structural changes are made".

"For example, if we win a piece of business, we have to bear the severance costs of the company that lost the contract."

His gloomy view of the UK and Europe chimes with comments he made last week when he said there would be job cuts in its more mature markets in 2009 coupled with investment in emerging countries.

Sorrell said then that WPP would invest in emerging countries such as India, China or Brazil next year, in which WPP is strong and that promise growth, while cutting elsewhere.

"We will have to invest in those markets and take out head count in more mature markets. The key thing for us is to balance revenue and cost growth in terms of headcount."

In The Times today he also says that the ailing West needs Turkey inside the EU. He says entry should be a no brainer.

"It is the gateway to the Middle East, has a young population, is highly entrepreneurial and would be a huge boost to the EU's 450 million people."

As always, Sorrell has faith in America and recalls that while people wrote off the US in the 1980s and said that Japan would take over along came Ronald Reagan and shook it all up.

"He changed the dynamics. What the world really needs right now is leadership in the Reaganite, Thatcherite, Blairite mould to lead us out of this crisis."

He also wonders like everyone else if Obama could be the man to lead the change.

"Mr Obama could be that person. I look at Barack Obama and it takes me back to when I was 18, to when John F. Kennedy was elected. Mr Obama is young, smart, a wonderful orator and represents a new hope, a new era. JFK was just the same and he changed the attitudes of my generation. That’s what the world needs now from Mr Obama."

Positive story about the future of newspapers

255762 — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:28:00 GMT

Rupert Murdoch has been putting the doomsayers of the newspaper industry in their place. The future he says is still bright, but it is in case you were in any doubt by now definitely online.

In a speech he has knocked the doomsayers who are predicting the internet will kill off newspapers. He calls them "misguided cynics". The title of the speech ("The Future of Newspapers: Moving Beyond Dead Trees") told you all you needed to know about his thinking (and those of his advisers) about the future of newspapers. He was reminding newspaper journalists almost that they often think too literally about where they are published and that simply because they're no longer "in print (on the printed page)" this does not signal the end - far from it this is only the beginning.

"Too many journalists seem to take a perverse pleasure in ruminating on their pending demise," Murdoch said, "Unlike the doom and gloomers, I believe that newspapers will reach new heights in the 21st century. Readers want what they've always wanted: a source they can trust. That has always been the role of great newspapers in the past. And that role will make newspapers great in the future."

Murdoch has always bet on newspapers, but he has also bet big online and that's what he is still doing so in this speech, which says there are opportunities online as web traffic rises and circulations continue a steady fall as the slow shift of power from the the printed page to online continues. His words also underscored the areas that digital publishers need to focus on if they want to get it right and realise these opportunities.

The march in that direction is irrefutable and quiet unstoppable. That's the obvious bit. Just look at the Christian Science Monitor as an example of this (although really, I sincerely believe that if they had changed the name of that paper a few years ago it would not be ceasing publication) as it goes online only (with a weekly magazine in support).

The challenge/opportunity that Murdoch talks about is how newspapers crack the conundrum of making cash out of their ever mightier online operations as more and more people choose this way to consume the 21st versions of newspapers.

He said the real business of newspaper owners "isn't printing on dead trees". Newspapers themselves are not the medium, but rather the qualities that good newspaper businesses embody: giving readers great journalism and great judgment – words they trust, which is why we all turn to our favoured media brands online when we want the answer to some question of the day. That's clearly where the future growth lies in the most trusted news, best communities, bloggers and other content.

"If papers provide readers with news they can trust, we'll see gains in circulation — on our web pages, through our RSS feeds, in emails delivering customised news and advertising, to mobile phones. In this coming century, the form of delivery may change, but the potential audience for our content will multiply many times over.

"The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around," he said. "It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today. But the thud it makes as it lands will continue to echo around society and the world."

The point about the qualities of newspaper businesses and how those qualities can be applied to where ever newspaper words appear is really the heart of the debate about the future of newspapers beyond those trees.

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"The layoff will be blogged" – blogging the downturn

255762 — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:23:00 GMT

Good piece in the New York Times today on how "the layoff will be blogged". It picks up on how this downturn is more public than any before it with bloggers covering not only each other's but their own departures as well.

Oddly, and dispiritingly, some people are even reading about their own layoffs on blogs. The paper reports on Elon Musk, chief executive of the electric-car company Tesla Motors in San Carlos, Calif., who said (get this) "he had no choice other than to blog about the Oct. 15 layoffs at the closely watched company — even though some employees had not yet been told they were losing their jobs".

The Gawker Media Valleywag blog gets a mention (you know the one that said blogging is dead. Lol), which is publishing a lot of the job losses in Silicon Valley where the geekstream is broadcasting departures as they happen via blogs, sites like Techcrunch and Twitter feeds.

The papers says that the tendency to blog layoffs is one that is going to spread to companies of all sizes and in all industries. It quotes Rusty (love the name) Rueff, a former human resources executive at Electronic Arts and PepsiCo, saying "whatever you say inside of a company will end up on a blog. That is kind of scary, not to mention a little dangerous for those still in employment (so I can't tell you about the secret memo I just got, sorry). So you have a choice as a company — you can either be proactive and take the offensive and say, 'Here’s what's going on', or you can let someone else write the story for you".

One company more than most has learnt this the hard way – USA Today-owner Gannett. When it told staff it was laying off 10% one journalists, Jim Hopkins, set up an unofficial Gannett Blog, which has since been writing daily about the rise and fall of Gannett since August.

Gannett doesn't have a company blog. No shocker there as many companies do not. Who gives them advice? Oh right PR firms many of whom still don’t get it. Yet.

It also mentions Steven Carpenter, chief executive of a two-year-old investing advice site, Cake Financial, who blogged the night before he laid off 30% of staff and directly after he met them.

"It let them know what we were up to in real time, so they didn’t get nervous about what was going on," he said.

Okay so some of this is new, but some people sure have short memories. Having sat through the dotcom boom and bust does no one remember Fucked Company? Fucked Company reported many thousand job lost in the last Dotcom boom bust circa 2001. Although, Fucked Company, as its homepage tells you, has long been frakked itself like many of the sites and companies it reported on.

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