12 TOPIC OF PAGE FOCUS NOVEMBER /DECEMBER 2013 www.worldnewspublishingfocus.org Enlightening exchange Industry leaders discuss major topics at Expo opening When you put three of the world’s leading minds in news publishing together on a stage, the outcome can only be illuminating. At the offi cial opening of the World Publishing Expo in Berlin, Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner, Guardian News and Media CEO Andrew Miller and noted analyst Ken Doctor did not disappoint the capacity audience. ach news organisation has made headlines recently: Axel Springer by establishing a paywall for its national newspaper sites and disposing of its last regional newspaper titles, and the Guardian by documenting mass worldwide eavesdropping by a U.S. security agency. Axel Springer is making some of the most serious moves by any general-interest publisher to shift its business model towards digital revenue, while the Guardian has become one of the top English-language websites in the world by espousing an approach it calls “Open Journalism.” Caught in the middle, so to speak, was Doctor, a U.S.-based analyst who has earned a reputation as a leading observer via his “Newsonomics” blog and numerous appearances at industry conferences. The following is an edited transcript of the exchange among the three in Berlin. Ken Doctor: As you look at the social numbers and other analytics now flowing in, what ways are you finding to turn increasing intelligence about your readers – where they’re coming from, when they’re coming – into money? Andrew Miller: The important thing is it empowers a newsroom to see this stuff. It’s not telling a newsroom about this – it’s giving them the information to be able to work with it. This is where our readers are, so there’s no point in pretending they’re not there. Maybe over time there will become a trade-off, that if you pay you don’t give away your data, but if you don’t pay maybe you implicitly say “I’ll give away my data.” But that’s still, I think, years away yet. Matthias Döpfner: Not doing analytics and not looking at them would be just stupid. On the other hand, I think there is a danger in over-valuing them. They are not going to tell you where to go and they are not going to replace healthy gut feelings and emotional elements in your decision-making. I strongly believe that these emotional factors, these intuitive factors, are much more important and more fruitful than the analytical ones only. Of couse, I dare to say that only because we are now generating record profits seven years in a row… What are your advertisers asking you for differently in 2013 than they were, say, five years ago? Are they asking for different kinds of data? Döpfner: There is a pretty substantial change going on. Our former business model was pretty much based on the reach figure that we were providing and a price for a certain reach figure, and the format that you are booking your ad in – and I think that’s over. Customers are much more sophisticated, looking for more sophisticated multimedia solutions and packages… and of course they are interested in getting more information on the people they are reaching. There is a wonderful model in the digital world… the performance-based model… This model basically says that the advertising client only pays for an ad if it led to a result, if it led to a transaction and it’s almost a no-risk proposal for advertising clients. So I’m a bit ambivalent, because we are strongly benefiting from that wonderful model. At the same time this is creating new demands on the advertising side. Miller: The biggest challenge in the U.K. for advertisers is the fact that the clients absolutely want to innovate and try things, while the ad agencies seem to still struggle with where that’s going. We deliberately moved away from selling numbers. We’re selling an audience… that’s winning clients for us. We did the GuardianWitness app, which has strong sponsorship from Everything Everywhere, a mobile company. It was about readers sending their content in and then us editing it and changing it around. So it’s about being very innovative in the advertising platforms but really engaging as much with the clients as it is with the advertising agencies, and so far that’s winning. Are you getting more content marketing kinds of approaches? Miller: We’re not getting them – we’re actively trying to find them. That’s really important… but the Guardian journalists still remain independent. The danger is for many companies to grab this stuff and compromise the journalism. We’ll never do that… We’ve regeared the whole of our sales team to be chasing down these things, not waiting for them to land. E Photos: Dirk Eisermann, Gordon Steiger
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