News

The crucial question no one, including Jeff Jarvis, can answer: how will we fund journalists in a world dominated by Google and Facebook?

Hearst is putting events front and centre in a ‘dynamic distribution’ strategy for its brands

I am in Ireland to address the Irish Press Council’s annual general meeting in a lecture entitled “Have newspapers got a future?” My theme is that they have no future. Declining circulation figures tell us that people are switching week by week from print to screen. It is simply a matter of time before it becomes unprofitable to continue publishing newsprint papers

Shares in Daily Mail and General Trust, publisher of the Daily Mail, fell by 10 per centon Thursday as it disclosed the toll that the sudden downturn in print advertising is having on its business. It suffered a 16 per cent decline in print advertising revenues in the first half of its financial year

Online advertising has grown rapidly in recent years, with US revenues hitting $59.6bn in 2015, according to eMarketer, compared with the $68.9bn generated by television. However, as online advertising has grown, so have concerns about viewer measurement, fraud and the placement of campaigns on sites that could be harmful to brands.

The events organiser, which hopes to conclude the sale of its PR Newswire and Agility businesses in coming weeks, said performance since the start of the year had been in line with management expectations. Larger events continued to drive performance, most notably Game Developers Conference, MAGICVegas, Enterprise Connect, MD&M West and Hotelex/FineFoods, UBM said.

Media everywhere needs to be focused on unbundling information that was once packaged for print, in order to give readers-users the opportunity to pay only for what they actually want. Nowhere is this easier than in markets where readers account for most of the revenues – like many of those sectors traditionally dominated by Bauer

Sales of printed books have grown for the first time in four years, lifted by the adult colouring book craze and 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland, as ebooks suffered their first ever decline

Time Inc. is chasing Millennials by going where they do: mobile videos of Internet stars

Magazines everywhere have been shredded by lost readers and advertising. But millions of worldwide sales are testimony to the global appeal of these disrupted brands. The business model may be broken but the brands are not. International editions of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, National Geographic, Men’s Health, Autocar, Time Out, GQ, Auto Bild, T3, Elle, Robb Report, and a hundred other magazines are reminders of huge audiences and halcyon days. But these long-established brands can now deliver a new future, taking publishers into retailing, consumer services, education, and screen entertainment – to compete with consumer products which are pushing into media content from the other direction

News Corp press release: In a statement released with the earnings, the media firm said: “While we believe in the strength of our print properties, we are also investing energetically in the rapid pursuit of digital which is clearly evident in the transition at Dow Jones.

“At Dow Jones this quarter, digital accounted for more than 50% of total revenues for the first time, and digital-only subscribers at the Wall Street Journal grew to 893,000, representing nearly 45% of the base.”

A 23 percent year-over-year jump in digital advertising revenues as print losses begin to subside

The company said organic revenue growth was 5.1% with 3.9% growth from acquisitions and 1.5% from currency fluctuations. By comparison the Interpublic Group last week reported organic revenue growth of 6.7%, Omnicom 3.8% and Publicis Groupe 2.9%

Havas reported that its revenue grew 7.8% in the first quarter to 506 million euros (about $569 million at today’s exchange rate) with organic growth, which strips out the impact of currency fluctuations, acquisitions and asset sales, was 3.4%.

About 1,500 jobs under threat after collapse of vital contract with Daily Mail publisher DMG Media

The world’s biggest advertising group has reported strong revenue growth in the first quarter as client spending in the US, UK and western Europe “perked up”. But warned that clients generally remained cautious amid a host of business pressures and geopolitical uncertainty

KPMG report also finds that 44% of UK adults are planning to block ads within the next six months

Total market grows at 7.5% to £20bn in 2015 but national press reports 11% fall to £1.2bn and slowdown in digital ads

MediaPost LondonBlog: According to eMarketer’s figures, the one in five who will be blocking ads this year will rise to just over one in four (27%) next year. This means that while one in ten were blocking just over a year ago in 2014, it will be one in four just three years later. Government was spot on to label ad-blocking software a modern-day protection racket. Any tech that blocks ads on sites unless the publisher pays to be whitelisted is very accurately described as a protection racket

The strength of the U.S. dollar continued to suppress revenue growth at Omnicom Group in the first quarter: revenues worldwide were up just 0.9% to about $3.5 billion. The company said currency fluctuations in the first quarter cost it about $97 million in top line growth. Organic growth, which excludes the impact of currency fluctuations, acquisitions and asset sales, was better — up 3.8% globally and 4.5% in the North America market, which accounts for 61% of the company’s business