21 Nov Integrating Advertising into Reader Revenue Models
DON’T COUNT OUT ADVERTISING
We’re borrowing a line to start this chapter from the excellent The Rebooting newsletter written by Brian Morrissey, who in turn quotes this amazing line from longtime Publicis Rishad Tobaccowala on ad agencies: “They say we’re like dinosaurs. But we’re like cockroaches. We are cockroaches. Everybody hates us. Nobody likes to see us. But cockroaches have outlived everyone. We scurry out of corners.”
Morrissey may have been writing about advertising in a different context but we thought it was an interesting (if a touch dramatic!) way to frame our discussion here. Here’s the nub of it: can media businesses survive sustainable on reader revenue alone or does a healthy business plan also have to bring in advertising into the mix? For some time during the Covid-19 years it seemed like reader revenue was going to be the only game in town as subscription numbers spiked. Then, just as quickly, digital ad spends bounced back from Covid lows and it was clear that ad money was going to have to be a big part of media’s recovery. We’re currently expecting another recession of sorts with ad spends, which should bring a renewed focus on reader revenue, but, you get the picture – these things are cyclical and there’s no point in denying that the media industry as a whole still isn’t largely dependent on advertising as a
business model.
This is also a great time to be thinking creatively about advertising. With the impending loss of third-party cookies, publishers are about to be put back in the driver’s seat in the digital ad market as they hold rich first-party data that’s invaluable to advertisers. “The choice between subscription- and advertising-based models is not binary. Combining them can both engage new visitors and offer repeat users exclusive content,” Sivan Tafla, co-founder and CEO of Total Media Solutions wrote for Adweek. “But to achieve this balance, publishers must be led by their audience. By delving into the data, examining user journeys and building profiles of the whole audience spectrum, publishers can better deliver a model that works for both sides.”
Overall, Tafla emphasises the point that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to monetisation for publishers – a message that we at INNOVATION have strongly emphasised over the years. Over the course of this chapter we’ll go over some of the most prominent and practical ways in which publishers today are thinking about getting advertising into their revenue mix.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
A great place to start is the approach taken by the publisher that is rightly held up as a great success story of subscriptions and reader revenue. The NYT’s announcement in 2022 that it had acquired the sports outlet The Athletic was a triumphant one by inheriting The Athletic’s 1.2 million subscribers, it had reached an incredible milestone of 10 million paying subscribers.
Writing in his newsletter, industry analyst Simon Owens noted that The Athletic was among a crop of media companies that mostly swore off advertising as a business model. “These publishers typically positioned advertising as antithetical to a good user experience, and they often cited it as the main driver behind clickbait, low quality content. The only way to deliver true value, they posited, was by charging the audience directly for access to content.”
The NYT’s leadership however, didn’t agree with this philosophy and the announcement soon came that The Athletic would begin featuring ads for the first time in its six-year history, with “ad formats including display, video, shopping functionality and photography, and ads living on newsletters, the home page and the discover feed.”
“The Athletic isn’t alone in making this move,” Owens notes. “After more than a decade of swearing off advertising, Netflix recently acquiesced to investor demands and announced it was introducing a cheaper, ad-supported tier later this year. Disney+ plans to debut its own version of the same.” Owens himself has written about how several Substack writers were going against the platform’s anti-advertising ethos and accepting sponsorships and even the tech publication The Information, which built its business on expensive, ad-free subscriptions, has recently hired a head of brand partnerships.
One way of explaining these moves is to acknowledge the reality, as many of these publishers have possibly done, that subscriptions alone cannot prop up a business. However, Owens points out that it could also be due to the fact that there’s more industry-wide recognition that advertising isn’t necessarily always bad.
“Sure, plenty of sites have installed abusive ad tech and then ramped up production of low-quality, clickbait content, but there’s also been a genuine movement across the media to introduce a better user experience,” he writes. As The Athletic’s chief commercial officer Sebastian Tomich told Adweek correspondent Mark Stenberg, “I truly believe that premium digital ads are not something that people are paying to get out of. People are paying for the journalism—and as long as we don’t introduce a bunch of bad ads that get in the way of the experience, we are confident in our ability to grow both businesses side by side.”
A new approach to advertising
The New York Times Company issued a press release in August last year regarding its second quarter 2022 results with Meredith Kopit Levien, president and chief executive officer, speaking both of the progress made with subscriptions as well as the company’s continued focus on building
its advertising business.
“We are confident in our advertising approach, which is grounded in the market leading suite of first-party data and premium ad products, that our subscription-first strategy enables,” she said, pointing to the fact that ads and subs are in no way mutually exclusive. “As the NYT has so many subscribers, it has a huge amount of first-party data it can then use to target ads for advertisers, which in turn, gives it a market advantage as advertisers get smarter and more “precision” based on their wanted contextual, personalised targeting of sometimes, very niche audiences,” Mark Challinor, Advertising Initiative Lead for INMA, writes. “The Times would then have to figure out its ad-targeting and optimisation capabilities using the first-party data it collects from its users.”
The power and promise of the bundle
Over the past decade, the NYT has pivoted its strategy to focus on attracting more consumer revenue via subscriptions. Now that it’s reached a near critical
mass of those subscribers, it sees a big opportunity to build more tailored ad products that cater to those users.
“A big part of the Times’ ad expansion strategy is scaling up the company’s premium/proprietary ad offerings across the whole subscription bundle over the next couple of years,” Alex Hardiman, head of product at the NYT, told INMA.
Since the beginning of the year, the publisher has been aggressively marketing audiences to subscribe to all five of its products: news, Games, Cooking, The Athletic and Wirecutter. It now has more than a million bundle subscribers, thanks to efforts such as adding Wordle, which it acquired in January 2022, to the main feed of its core news app and rolling out a “Play” tab. It also has over nine million paid subscribers total across all of its subscription packages. Though this is an impressive number, it is still a small percentage of the 135 million that engage with the Times’ content monthly for free via its ad-supported products.
This has also meant that sales and marketing costs in the third quarter of 2022 decreased by $19 million, or 22.7%, compared to the third quarter of 2021, per its earnings. “We knew that we needed to take a destination-first approach, with subscribers building a direct relationship with us, on our platforms,” said David Rubin, NYT’ss chief marketing and communications officer. “This healthy, direct relationship with our readers is not only good for our subscription business but good for our entire business.”
Bundle subscribers read more and more regularly; between 10% and 20% more bundle subscribers “engage each week than news-only subscribers,” said CEO Meredith Kopit Levien. Those subscribers also pay more for the privilege (to the tune of 50% more than news alone). More importantly, the bundle offers advertisers access both to new and existing audiences, but in new contexts. “Clients are super excited about the opportunity to advertise on the products we are launching,” said Mohit Lohia, SVP and head of digital advertising. “The way traffic is moving, a good portion is going into Games and Cooking. Ad revenue starts moving to where traffic is growing.”
In a recent Rebooting piece, Brian Morissey predicts that rebundling is bound to occur with the slow move towards simpler subscription offerings. An example is the subscription-based newsletter/podcast Stratechery, which features commentary on tech and media news, which also announced its plan to bundle its offerings in September 2022 as Stratechery Plus. Too many subscription products can be confusing: As Jack Marshall of Toolkits wrote in June 2022, “many are now deliberately distancing themselves from the vague product promises, confusing feature sets, exuberant marketing and convoluted pricing structures that have become commonplace in recent years, opting instead to package and price their subscription products.” For publishers who have succeeded in building valuable and differentiated subscription products, a shift in how they position and market those offerings is underway.
MOVING AWAY FROM THE AD VS SUBSCRIPTION BINARY
For publishers to thrive in 2023—a challenging economic period, with ad revenue falling—they need to have reconciled the coexistence of advertising and subscription business lines in order to grow both. “How to balance advertising and subscriptions, how to use the value of a subscriber audience as a lure for advertisers—they’ve got more data on them, they are more engaged—that is where we see it headed,” said Michael Silberman, EVP of strategy and social at Piano, which works with publishers on subscription strategies.
The choice between subscription- and advertising-based models is not binary. Combining them can both engage new visitors and offer repeat users exclusive content. Micropayment models, such as those offered by Patreon and Substack, have previously been explored by publishers to put certain newsletters or podcasts behind paywalls while allowing users to access other content for free.
Subscriptions were frequently viewed as an unfortunate necessity, often framed as a last resort forced on publishers by the vicissitudes of a brutal ad market that had been gobbled up by platforms due to their heft and depth of data. Many subscriptions were marketed as a way to escape ads – The Athletic went this path, and many others “ad free” as a big benefit. As Morrissey wrote in another edition of The Rebooting, “[it’s] hard to believe that a reasonable ad product will cause a massive deterioration of the ad business. Upstart publishers who began with subscriptions as their main business model, such as Puck and Punchbowl, have found that their subscriber base is actually good leverage in the ad market, since there’s no better proof of a durable, loyal audience than people willing to pay, not to mention the first-party data advantages for large subscription operations. He believes there is
a reason The Wall Street Journal, which has always had a paywall, has a lucrative ad business. Ads+subs is bound to become the default model.
A good example is that of the Financial Times. Financial Times chief executive John Ridding told Deloitte and Enders Analysis’ Media and Telecoms 2021 & Beyond conference that publishers do not have to choose between advertising and subscriptions as there is still “strong growth” to be had in both revenue streams. The FT’s digital content revenues are now bigger than all its other revenue streams combined and more than three times print advertising, which is the next biggest. Ridding revealed that digital advertising revenues at the FT were up by 30% in 2020 and overtook print in the final quarter of the year. This is what Ridding calls the “result of deeper audience data and an increasingly effective marketing proposition”. There is, according to him, strong growth to be had in both ads and subs as long as publishers have a “robust reader revenue foundation”.
ADOPTING THE RIGHT STRATEGIES FOR REVENUE GENERATION THROUGH ADS
- Know your audience
In order to choose the correct strategy for ads and subscriptions, a company must know its audience and niche. At the Press Gazette’s latest Future of Media Technology conference, David Dinsmore, COO of News UK, offered the examples of The Times and The Sun. The Times, a legacy newspaper, has attracted an audience who are used to paying for news, which is why they were an early pioneer of the digital paywall with subscriber revenue at the heart of their business model. This business model is now supplemented by premium ads, even for subscribers. The Sun, however, operates differently. Its nature as a tabloid however attracts a different user demographic, and its lower cover price and more informal nature means that readers are less willing to pay for news. This is why the organisation focuses its revenue strategy on ads – the best way to benefit from users’ time, even if it is free. Dinsmore recommended good knowledge of audience habits to not only provide the best possible offering, but also assure sustainable revenue. - The right number of ads Knowing one’s audience is also crucial to surfacing the correct and right number of ads. Also at the conference, Karen Eccles, Managing Director of Digital, Partnerships and Innovation at The Telegraph, underlined the importance of maintaining a strong focus on user experience, urging publishers to experiment with ads while keeping the audience at the heart of its decisions. With regard to type and number of ads, The Telegraph and their ad providers found that one premium ad proved five times more valuable than five ads on a page. In fact, the overall yield of ad revenue at The Telegraph was found to be lower when a page carried more than one ad.
- Ad placement Good ad strategy also cares for readers. Piers North, CRO at Reach PLC, discussed how Reach built Mantis, a platform to ensure brand safety and contextual advertising. Using keyword blocking and more, Reach ensures that inappropriate ads are not placed on pages which carry sensitive stories. At the time of the Queen’s death, for instance, Reach suspended all ads in an effort to be sensitive, being open with ad providers about the move.
- Ads in podcasting The Press Gazette conference revealed another commonly held belief: the golden ticket for podcast revenue was going to be ads. Matt Hill encouraged publishers to see a 30 second podcast advert as holding the same value as a page ad in the day’s paper, and to charge the same. In terms of content, Kate that adverts in podcasting had to be relevant, so they are valuable for both podcasters and advertisers, and can fit seamlessly. For this, knowledge of the audience is imperative, as are the right partners. Small podcasts can benefit equally from advertising— Auddy’s Meera Kumar highlighted how smaller podcasts of similar topics together are often grouped while selling to advertisers, and how publishers have to demonstrate how ads can be spread over multiple shows.
- Optimizing infrastructure Publishers fully reliant on advertising have strong incentives to constantly improve website performance and user experience to appear higher on Google rankings and draw in more user traffic. As important, according to Total Media Solutions’ Tafla, is the need for the majority of small- and medium-sized publishers that opt for a mixed advertising and subscription model to provide the same reliable experience as their fully ad-funded counterparts. A wellperforming website is essential to capturing return visitors and converting them to subscribers.
- Embracing Registration Lucinda Southern, Adweek’s managing editor of media and technology, predicts that the coming year will see a pronounced focus on registered accounts, a hugely important cohort in terms of driving subscriptions and offering scale for advertisers. “The main challenge of executing on a shared subscriptions and advertising business is delivering an effective registration strategy. Logged-in users are vitally important to both,” said George Montagu, head of insights at FT Strategies. The Wall Street Journal, with 3.7 million subscribers, has had a robust advertising revenue stream, partly due to its focus on professional leaders and corporate credit cards, where demand is more stable and business critical. Parent Dow Jones uses dynamic paywall technology to optimise onsite advertising inventory, drive registration, capture first-party data and convert unpaid readers into subscribers. The paywall’s latest iteration predicts a reader’s willingness to subscribe to determine who is offered the option to register for access to a limited number of articles. So far more readers are subscribing when registration is deployed in the right context, and registered users are more likely to subscribe compared to anonymous users.
A WHOLLY AD-BASED REVENUE MODEL:
SEMAFOR
The recently launched news website Semafor came into an industry in which economic pressure has forced several media houses like Buzzfeed and Vice to cut back on international expansion. Co-founder Justin Smith was optimistic, however. “I think the business model conditions for global news media are better in 2022 than they’ve ever been since before the internet arrived,” he said, “and it has to do with the ubiquitous broad adoption of subscriptions and the loosening grip of tech platforms on global ad markets.”
Supported initially by around $25 million from investors, Semafor’s business model is now entirely reliant on direct-sold advertising and event sponsorship revenue. While this may be considered a risky move by some in the current economic climate, the company’s founding CRO Rachel Oppenheim is confident in her team’s client-centric approach, which prioritises “innovative” branded content and running ads against “experimental” editorial products.
By focusing on the pockets of advertisers’ budgets that are directed to corporate reputation building, the company hopes to insulate itself from the ebbs and flows of consumer and product advertising. Programmatic is also not a part of Semafor’s advertising mix, once again, preferring to build relationships with clients that are hopefully long term. The company has launched with partners like Verizon, Mastercard and Pfizer.
Relying on advertising during an economic downturn
Semafor is focused on B2B and corporate reputation advertising. For Oppenheim, the audiences that it is trying to build around represent influential, opinion leader audiences around the world. “Across every industry and category that we’ve been engaged with from an advertiser and partnership perspective, they’re under a lot of pressure from an economic perspective, but they’re also under a lot of pressure to drive positive brand reputation to engage critical stakeholders and to reach audiences in new ways,” she said to Digiday. She believes there is now a widely held belief that innovation is a necessity in this media landscape, with more bets being placed on new partners and new platforms.
Going beyond traditional advertising placements
Semafor works with Genesis advertiser Hyundai across platforms, from email newsletters to video journalism, and across premium advertising. What Oppenheim believes to be the “crow jewel in the relationship”, however, is that many of Semafor’s Newsmaker events are going to be taking place at Genesis House in New York City. This non-traditional approach to marry its strengths with Genesis will, she believes, result in the creation of something that’s of “high value for their brand for their audiences.”
DROPPING THE PAYWALL
TIME
Axios reported the bombshell news earlier this year that Time will be fully removing its digital paywall beginning June 1. The company has had some form of a digital paywall since 2011. Time CEO Jessica Sibley told Axios that the shift is both a business and editorial decision. “The opportunity to reach more audiences globally, that are younger, and that are diverse, is really important to Sam and myself,” she noted, referencing Time’s newlyappointed editor in chief Sam Jacobs.
As per the Axios article, Time plans to produce “more ad-supported, digital content that will live on its website, its mobile app and across social media. The company will continue to cover the same types of topics editorially and to lean heavily into a few key focus areas, such as climate and sustainability, health care and politics.”
The digital content from Time’s magazine will now be free, Axios reported, alongside all other content on the website, including 100 years’ worth of Time’s archived content. The company will still charge for the print product and still offer a paid digital version of the print magazine through retailers like Amazon Kindle and Apple News and through Apple’s App Store.
But the big news of course here, is that a publisher of the size and calibre of Time is betting on ad revenue rather than sticking with the paywall. It must be noted here that other publishers, notably Quartz, have tried the strategy of dropping a paywall that they have had for a while in the hope of bringing in more audiences. It hasn’t always worked out, at least in Quartz’s case and Adweek reported earlier this year that the site has continued to see traffic drop but we are monitoring the Time experiment with much interest indeed.
We’re going to borrow a few lines once again from an excellent newsletter – Axios Finish Line – to start this chapter. This edition was written by Axios’ CEO and co-founder Jim VandeHei: “AI will rain a hellfire of fake and doctored content on the world, starting now. That’ll push readers to seek safer and trusted sources of news — directly instead of through the side door of social media.”
“Advertisers will shift to safer, well-lit spaces, creating a healthy incentive for some publishers to get rid of the litter you see on their sites today. That shift is already happening.” Those thoughts perfectly capture the case now for the power and possibilities with print advertising. There is already plenty of evidence to show that the digital clutter might be driving brands to consider, in a fresh way, the power of print.Recently,
General Electric took over The New York Times’ print advertising for a day, amounting to 22 full-page colour ads as well as five partial pages. Omnicomowned ad agency TBWA paid for its ‘Last Ad from the Last Big Ad Agency on Madison Avenue’ full-page ad in The Times, advertising its move to a different location in Manhattan. In India, advertisers have been aggressively using QR codes in print as the new call to action. In the UK, brands that have been experimenting with print’sunique ability to create awareness, hold attention and drive commercial actions are achieving standout. For example – last year, Confused.com released comicstrip- style print ads titled ‘the Confused. comics’. Created by Accenture Song, the ‘comics’ offered a light-hearted commentary against the increasingly confusing times in the UK.
As we survey the landscape now, here’s our attempt, using some stunning examples from this and previous years, to deliver a timely reminder of what print can do for your brand and the various ways in which it can make campaigns and stories come alive.
PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR AHEAD
Though the printing market has suffered the effects of the volatility of the past few years, with exceptional increases in the cost of raw material and energy, leading to sharp price rises in paper, inks and logistics, print is still very much in the game. According to Print Power’s report Print Media Predictions 2023, the coming years will be marked by three trends: automation, sustainability and personalisation.
Firstly, automation and process optimisation will continue to play a big role this year in maximising efficiencies across the production chain. From a brand owner and agency perspective, automation enables products to get into stores more efficiently, at a reduced manufacturing cost and with less associated waste. Therefore, brands can be more dynamic and responsive to changingconsumer behaviour and selling patterns.
Secondly, the spotlight is on sustainability, as corporate brands put pressure on their print and signage partners to offer more friendly options for out-of-home, event and point of sale graphics and other types of visual communication. Automation plays a major role in reducing waste, but print buyers are also expected to have more consideration for the technologies and inks being used to produce their products, and the materials they’re made out of. Working towards their goals of sustainability, HH Global, leader in tech-enabled creative production and procurement and global leader in sustainability capabilities, have created its own proprietary software that measures CO2. Everything passes through what’s called its sustainability hub, which has externally verified data points from environmental databases like ecoinvent.
The third hot topic is personalisation. With creative and technical capability matched by widespread and immediate demand, forward-thinking print businesses have seen the opportunity for individualisation that came with the shift to digital production. Consumers everywhere want experiences that are personalised, instant, and augmented. Brands that embrace personalisation are sharpening their competitive edge.
Recognising this, FESPA has launched Personalisation Experience, an experiential showcase and multi-day conference. Geared towards brand owners, marketers and agencies, the event will zone in on how to harness personalisation to enhance or differentiate products in areas including personalised loyalty marketing, sportswear and fashion customisation, and personalised packaging.
CASE STUDIES
FOLHA S. PAULO
Brazil
Brazilian Folha de S. Paulo is a daily newspaper that continues to place print at the centre of its revenue strategy, despite its digital platform enjoying the largest engagement rate in Brazil based on the time readers spend on the website. The print platform represents 64 % of the company’s advertising revenues, its adoption of multiple innovative approaches to print advertising has helped keep it relevant in an increasingly digital age.
As part of its 100th anniversary celebration, Folha took a creative route: it used currency-quality paper and inks to create the world’s “most valuable newspaper.” The idea was that the professional press was so valuable that newspapers should be printed with the same care used to produce money. In short, at a time in which misinformation was rampant, Folha reiterated that quality, reliable information was worth as much as money.
This historical print edition attracted more than 100 advertisers from some of the most important brands, such as MasterCard, Honda and others,
and on that particular day, revenues were more than 20 times higher than regular editions. This diverse array of important brands proved not only the power of a legacy brand but also the value of print these days. Indeed, such innovation and capabilities make newspapers more valuable to advertisers — and more attractive to agencies. According to Marcelo Benez, chief commercial officer at Folha, it’s all about what one can offer. “If you talk to the people who are working today in advertising and up to a certain level of seniority, the main question is what can news brands offer?” he asks. “Well, they offer extended creativity.”
Print also affords companies the flexibility to innovate with things that cannot be accomplished on the digital realm, resulting in the creation
of print ads that are nothing short of works of art. The Super Giant Folha is one example, an ad composed of 20 standard pages, back and front, which together created a super-sized graphic with major impact.
In addition, Folha uses print ads to complement digital offerings such as podcasts. A campaign for Audi, for instance, used print to promote the
luxury carmaker’s podcast. Among its most innovative campaigns, however, was what Folha did for Earth Day in Making a strong statement against global warming, the paper’s advertiser JBS worked to transform the print edition by turning it blue, signifying the pressing need to make the climate crisis a top priority in journalism, policy, and everyday choices.
STUFF
New Zealand
New Zealand’s Stuff attracted the attention of advertisers by repositioning print as a premium. According to Steve Hutton, group sales director, the company offers “practical solutions to help generate ad revenue growth by bringing print to the forefront of our creative thinking across our markets”.
In 2020, Stuff launched a print advertising competition, Paper Planes, to allow creative agencies and brands to show the power of print and how it can be used in advertising, and to give the Stuff brand a lift. It hoped, through the campaign, to engage with key ad partners, activate them to deliver print campaigns, and ultimately generate industry discussion around the creativity of print and drive it forward. Paper Planes invited entries from all creative agencies in New Zealand and had two categories: best print concept and best digital extension. Winners received US$327,000 worth of advertisement across Stuff’s entire product line. The competition has been wildly successful; offers command triple-digit price premiums and have contributed dramatically to Stuff’s commercial performance.
An example of an advertisement carried by Stuff for Hyper Ride shows perfectly the power of the newspaper. To address the issue of online retail sizing through print, the advertisement allowed for users to place their foot on the newspaper to ascertain their foot size. This not only tickled audiences but proved enormously useful; a foot cannot be placed on a laptop or phone.
BILD
Germany
According to Bild’s managing director Andreas Conradt, print comprises 89% of newspaper revenue in Germany. Capitalising on the fact that the majority of readers in the country find online advertising annoying and that print benefits from advertising and journalistic content being viewed at the same time, Bild has leveraged the print medium to create unique advertising experiences. “Print can do things that you cannot do with digital advertising,” says Conradt, as their latest record shows. The German tabloid, publishe by Axel Springer, has pioneered a new advertising concept it calls megapanoramic ads, now a standard offering used successfully with other advertisers. In 2019, for the 50th anniversary of the Berlin TV tower, the editorial team set out to create a world record with the largest infographic ever printed in a daily newspaper. With Ferrero onboard as a sponsor, Bild’s technical experts glued three pieces of newspaper together to create a printed field that spread across six Nordic pages, with a total length of 2.35 metres (92 inches).
Then, the image, resembling a big poster, was inserted into the newspaper. This concept was also replicated on the 35th anniversary of the Mercedes- Benz car factory. Bild is an example of a company that firmly believes in the relevance and popularity of print even in a digital world. Conradt believes that good quality print will always be welcome, and that its reach is incomparable. “Of course, you can sneak into customers’ households through digital ways, but you cannot distribute computers, tablets, or smartphones for free,” he says.
ADS THAT LEVERAGE THE VERY PHYSICALITY OF PRINT
- High-Funtioning print: Go Outside
Brazil
With the pandemic marked by lethargy and increased indoor time, and races and trail runs in Brazil having been cancelled, runners needed motivation to get back on their feet once restrictions eased. To inspire its subscribers to return to exercise, Brazil’s outdoor adventure magazine Go Outside took the physicality of print to the next level. Occupying a full page, “Take this ad for a run” had a race-official running number unique to each subscriber printed, which would afford free entry to the Kailash Trail Run. Each page was printed on waterproof paper and featured a QR code that the reader had to activate to confirm their place in the race. - Change the Ref
United States
The physicality of print was also central to Change the Ref’s antigun message, literally shoving the message directly into people’s hands. At first glance, a series of infographics showed the extent of how fireams are responsible for suicide and teenager and domestic violence death rates in the US. However, readers could turn the ad around and see the death stats ominously turn into the shape of a gun. The art direction communicated serious statistics without the copy needing to be read too carefully. The powerful campaign let the reader feel the heavy burden of holding a gun, and also served as a grim reminder that guns are behind some of the most horrific data points in the US. This campaign would not have worked on any other medium, reinforcing the power of print in driving home messages.
PRINT AS A TOOL TO UPHOLD DEMOCRACY:
AN-NAHAR
In a laughable but serious stalling tactic, the Lebanese government sought to cancel the 2022 elections citing shortage of paper. However, newspaper An-Nahar set out to defend the ideals of democracy. Together with agency BBDO Dubai, they stopped the press for the first time in 88 years. Instead, they ‘released’ the Elections Edition, a simple message displayed on an empty newsstand that declared the elections would happen no matter what. Paper from the unprinted edition was sent to the government to print voting ballots, and readers could access an online edition via a QR code. In an impactful move that proves that even an unprinted newspaper holds the power to transform, the organisation prioritised donating ink and paper over printing their edition, reiterating the cultural, political and social relevance of the print medium. Additionally, the online edition became the highest read in the history of the paper.
USING PRINT TO GAIN CONSUMERS’´TRUST
When brands want consumers to hear (and trust) what they’re saying, they use print. Ulbe Jelluma, managing director of Print Power Europe, believes that the fact that brands — including digital ones — turn to print when they want to get their message across speaks volumes. “When you want to say something important, you say it in a newspaper,” he says in the INMA report titled The Power and Promise of Print Advertising. He refers to three specific examples of how brands turn to print. In one of the most talked-about ads in recent years, KFC, in 2018, apologised to customers after running out of chicken during the pandemic. The shortage caused the fast-food chain to shut down some 900 outlets in the U.K., and the company responded with a full page ad in the Sun and Metro newspapers. The ad showed an empty bucket of chicken surrounded by crumbs and, instead of the familiar KFC logo, the letters were transposed to read “FCK.” In addition to explaining what happened and offering an apology, the company thanked customers for “bearing with us” and received resounding approval on social media.
Similarly, an ad from Facebook attacked Apple for its privacy position. Facebook publicly criticised Apple’s iOS privacy changes in full-page newspaper ads. “We’re standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere,” read the headline on an ad inside The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Thee ads were related to Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes that would make it more difficult for companies like Facebook to target users with ads. A few days after rolling out its new privacy policy for WhatApp, the Facebook-owned messaging service put out full-page ads in leading English-language dailies such as the Hindu, Indian Express, The Telegraph, Deccan Herald and the Times of India titled “WhatsApp respects and protects your privacy”.
ADVERTISING A BRAND + A LARGER MESSAGE
By taking a bolder approach and discussing topical social and environmental issues in print-based ads in unexpected ways, brands let readers know that they have strong core values that help to keep them in the forefront of their target audience’s minds. Here are some examples:
Dove Reserve Selfie
Underscoring the trustworthiness of print as a channel, Dove’s campaign uses the long-established integrity of print to shine a light on the damaging effects of unrealistic beauty standards among the younger generation – a problem significantly escalated by mobile and social platforms. Responding to the disturbing level of distortion in apps causing selfie dysmorphia, a rise in cosmetic surgery and teen suicides,
Dove addressed the self-esteem crisis by photographing real girls aged nine to 13 and showing images of their natural selves alongside their own heavily manipulated shots. To its target audience – most likely parents – the contrast was startling, and the pressure felt by millions of girls daily to look certain ways was brought to the fore. In a massive endorsement for print’s reach and impact, the campaign got 6 billion earned impressions, inspired more than 4000% of their Self-Esteem Toolkit downloads and created 99% positive sentiment.
MCDONALD’S: Take Away your Takeaway
In 2022, McDonald’s took ownership of the fact that its packaging accounts for a significant amount of littering in Norwegian cities. Its Take Away Your Takeaway campaign sought to encourage lovers of the fast-food chain to be accountable and reduce littering. This utilised photography of discarded Mcdonald’s packaging on the streets of Oslo and simple, to-the-point copy: “Unfortunately too much of our packaging ends up on the streets. Now we’re doing our biggest effort yet and will clean even more than we already do.” Combining print, social media, out-ofhome displays and McDonald’s trays, Take Away Your Takeaway is a prime example of a brand speaking out on issues facing the community and environment and using its influence to spark real change. The striking yet unpolished photography exposes the reality of the issue and the sincere, concise messaging speaks to the authenticity of the message.
IKEA
With shocking stats showing that in Norway alone, over 3 million pieces of furniture ended up in landfill, IKEA knew it needed a message to drill home this grim reality. Ikea created The Trash Collection in 2021 – an upcycled range of products made out of actual IKEA trash. The brutally honest print campaign showed landfill alongside the new collection. The ad copy linked to an online page telling customers how to take bettercare of their IKEA furniture. The creative highlights discarded Ikea products and says where they were found, what was done to refurbish them to working order, and their secondhand price compared with the original. The items are also highlighted on the campaign website, where visitors can find out how to order spare parts for Ikea items, learn more about Ikea’s buy-back scheme and get price quotes for specific pieces of furniture, and read about Ikea’s pledge to achieve zero waste and become 100% circular and climate-positive by 2030. In the campaign, IKEA acknowledges being part of a bigger environmental problem and so is creating a sustainability programme.
USING PRINTED MATERIAL IN FUN WAYS…
In 2021, to combat Berliners’ famous crabbiness around the holidays, and to help customers navigate the chaos of Christmas commuting, Berlin’s public transport operator BVG came up with an edible ticket infused with hemp oil.
The Portuguese (Re) Constitution
With the Carnation Revolution’s 50th anniversary looming, Penguin Books looked to educate younger generations using the very instrument used for censorship – the blue pencil. Agency FCB Lisbon commissioned a group of artists to reinvent the fascist constitution with illustrations and poems using words selected from the historical document. They were tasked with employing a technique called ‘black-out poetry’ to create something new and beautiful by selecting words from the oppressive text and blocking out the rest with rich illustrations. Artists were thus given the licence to flip historical documents of subjugation into messages of freedom. Page after page, words were recontextualized amid images ranging from a human heart embraced by two hands to objects that echo Portugal’s erstwhile military regime, like combat boots and guns. By the end, the works were collected into a book, published in 2022. The powerful tome resulted in $1million in earned media, becoming a bestseller and now in its second edition. It’s being used in schools – as part of the National Reading Plan — to teach children about the revolution, and is part of collection at the Aljube Museum — a former political prison.
THE POWER OF REACTIVE ADS
Despite the diminishing relevance of print among modern audiences, marketers retain a special place in their hearts for a witty ad contextually placed within newsprint. The layers of trust the medium affords, and the implied effort in getting the comms on to the page, signal to readers a worthy message. In March 2023, Asda communicated a new vegetable sale policy – comms that should put any reader to sleep, but didn’t. Yet again, a print ad addressing a supply chain issue resonated with people. Asda, Havas, and Spark Foundry ran the Romaine Calm ad below a news story detailing empty shelves and ministerial incompetence. Asda navigated the issue with a memorable pun that flowed from print into social and online. The creators believe comms like this that are reassuring are important and help to stem feelings of panic in fractious times. Starcom’s commercial display director Nick Brown, also sees benefit for the newspapers. “Newspapers love the opportunity to run reactive activity because they get PR benefits and it looks great on the printed page, which makes them very amenable to work with.” It is vital the ad sits next to a relevant story so readers make the instant connection.
The Indian Case – Times of India
It is vital to keep in mind geographical and cultural differences in how print is perceived. Says Ulbe Jelluma, managing director of Print Power Europe in an INMA report “We need to keep in mind that yes, [print] might be in a very difficult situation in the US, but that is not the case in other markets.” Overall, print is alive and well. “If we look at the percentage of revenues by sources, 56% of all the revenues of newspapers are still related to either print, print circulation, or print advertising,” he says. India is one of the regions in which print remains an important revenue stream for newspapers. Print sales have risen 27% at Times of India in two years and between April 2020 and March 2021, 1,097 new publications were registered in India. In 2021, print revenue grew 39% and, based on current numbers, print in India is projected to have grown 13% in 2022. In India, advertisers leverage print 14 times more than mediums such as television, social media, and other digital platforms. Malcolm Raphael, senior vice president at Times of India Group in Mumbai, India, believes innovation in print is the most impactful way to announce a product launch, differentiate the brand from peers, and make competition and consumers sit up and take notice. Advertisers are increasingly beginning to recognise that a print innovation, when done right, also feeds into organic virality on social media.
Raphael dives into three trends that have become increasingly popular:
- Format innovations including integration of the ad within editorial and the masthead.
- Contextual innovations using archival content effectively.
- Engagement-led innovations, where a brand is unveiled bit by bit.
FORMAT INNOVATIONS
The uniqueness of the masthead is used to enhance brand engagement in what is called “masthead integration.” The people of India recently woke up to a front-page jacket formally announcing the takeover of Air India by the Tata Group. This was an historic announcement captured in print. The visibility of advertisements can also be increased with an “edit wrap.” Front-page jackets and edit wraps draw attention to print advertisements.
CONTEXTUAL INNOVATIONS
Advertisers are increasingly looking to integrate their messaging in the organic contextual environment of newspapers.
ENGAGEMENT- LED INNOVATIONS
One way to create intrigue on the front page and encourage people to open up the message is through a “French window.” Innovative designs encourage people to look at and interact differently with the printed newspaper. Multiple “bookmarks” may also be used to reveal the brand benefits bit-by-bit before the final reveal. A slow reveal of content encourages people to keep learning more. Innovations, Raphael believes, will play a crucial role in maintaining the engagement quotient with the print medium and ensuring its relevance in a rapidly evolving technology-driven marketplace. “It creates high impact and enhances brand engagement with the message, resulting in higher recall and shareability,” he says in an INMA blog
ACCESSIBILITY / INCLUSIVITY IN PRINT
In December 2021, Metro joined forces with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) to create the first-ever Braille cover of a national newspaper. To promote International Day of Disabled People on Friday 3rd December, the special edition of Metro was distributed in nine major central London locations including travel hubs like Kings Cross station. Over 15,000 copies were picked up by daily commuters, featuring a Braille message letting blind and partially sighted people know that we are on our way
to making our world a truly accessible place for everyone. Metro and RNIB teamed up to bring the issue of accessibility to the forefront of the nation’s mind by transforming the
cover of Metro as a simple yet effective way of making the steps towards a more inclusive society for the visually impaired. The inside cover also featured a QR code for readers to scan and have the opportunity to experience how blind or partially sighted individuals see things differently, as well as learn what the Braille cover message says.
The Innovation in News Media World Report is published every year by INNOVATION Media Consulting in association with WAN-IFRA, The report is co-edited by INNOVATION President, Juan Señor, and Senior Consultant Jayant Sriram