Audrey Cooper is still new to her role as Managing Editor of SF Chronicle/SF Gate, but she’s already bubbling with ideas and an enthusiastic vision for bridging content and advertising in a digital-first environment. In a fireside chat at Leading In Local: Interactive Local Media, she ran through a multitude of new products, platforms and content features to paint the picture of a robust but fast-changing digital organization that also happens to print a newspaper.

One of Cooper’s chief goals is to “package content in a way that’s more approachable to advertisers.” That doesn’t mean bending journalistic ethics and norms – “highfalutin journalism” is still critical to the mission – but “finding the type of content that people are interested in” across numerous verticals and then creating an accessible and desirable advertiser connection.

A prime example is food. In the foodie capital that is SF, SF Chronicle/SF Gate are using a variety of means, including crowdsourced content, to maintain a strong voice. “People communicate with us through Facebook, Instagram, e-mail. We have to find ways to draw more voices into the paper.” Tech coverage is a similar challenge, with a bevy of blogs and websites competing for traffic.

The company is also investing heavily in online video, not as a TV replacement, but as an additive source. “Sometimes we can do it better than TV because we’re not limited to a specific time or segment. And we can do it well on mobile.”

At the end of the day, SF Chronicle/SF Gate still maintain powerful local assets: 18 million monthly unique visitors, 175 reporters (with more journalists on specific beats than many competitors have in their entire newsroom), and the flexibility from parent company Hearst to be digitally-focused and experiment.

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A new Local Commerce Monitor™ (LCM) UK Spotlight report examines UK SMBs that self-identify as newspaper advertisers in the UK reveals a huge opportunity for growth and adoption of digital and non-traditional media channels. UK newspaper SMBs are adopting newer media types at a slower rate compared to their non-newspaper counterparts.

The new Spotlight report uses data from the recently completed LCM UK Wave 2013. The report is the latest in an ongoing series that drills down into the LCM data to examine how SMB advertisers acquire and retain customers.

LCM U.K. is BIA/Kelsey’s on-running study of how U.K. SMB advertisers are evolving their use of media to acquire and retain customers.

The LCM UK Wave 2013 data shows that SMBs that participate in newspaper advertising differ from those that do not use newspaper advertising in several important ways:

* Over the past 12 months, SMBs that use newspaper advertising on average spent 26% of their budget for digital and online. By contrast, non-newspaper advertisers spend 36% of their budget on digital advertising.

* Newspaper SMBs are more likely to offer a paper-based loyalty program than their non-newspaper counterparts’ 70% vs. 63%, and are 6% percent less likely to run a digitally-based program than the same group.

* Newspaper SMBs plan to increase their digital budgets by a higher amount than their non-newspaper counterparts. Digital already accounts for 25% of newspaper SMBs’ overall advertising budget.

* Newspaper and other traditional media types are not growing nearly as fast as digital and mobile channels. Seven out of the top eight future marketing priorities are non-traditional and digital media types, including social media advertising, advanced analytics and performance monitoring, SEO and mobile advertising.

Interested in learning more about LCM UK Wave 2013 or getting a custom cut for your business? Check out BIA/Kelsey’s LCM UK page.

We’ll be covering this and other themes in great depth at our upcoming Leading in Local conference, December 10-12 in San Francisco. Be there and join the conversation!

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Even newspaper advertisers, long seen as favoring traditional media, are increasingly shifting their ad spend to digital. More and more these SMBs are exploring the advertising opportunities digital media has to offer and with that spending is shifting in the digital direction.

BIA/Kelsey dives into the changes happening with newspaper SMBs in its newest “Spotlight” report based on data from Wave 17 of the Local Commerce Monitor™(LCM). This report is the most recent in the ongoing “Spotlight” series that drills down into the LCM data to examine how SMB advertisers acquire and retain customers.

LCM is BIA/Kelsey’s long-running study of how U.S. SMB advertisers are evolving their use of media to acquire and retain customers.

According to this LCM data, newspaper SMBs are not so behind the times when it comes to advertising. Of the top 10 media used for advertising and promotions by these SMBs, five are digital media with the top three being Facebook, email and Google. Given that information, spending on digital/online advertising is projected to increase over the next year.

In particular, owned media (business-controlled channels and properties; i.e., Facebook Page, blog, email marketing list) is a sector of digital where these SMBs will be shifting their attention and dollars. Nearly half of newspaper SMBs rated their owned media assets as “highly important.”

Interested in learning more about LCM Wave 17 or getting a custom cut for your business? Check out BIA/Kelsey’s LCM page.

We’ll be covering this and other themes in great depth at our upcoming Leading in Local conference, December 10-12 in San Francisco. Be there and join the conversation!

The post SMBs Who Utilize Newspaper Advertising: Not as Traditional As You Would Expect appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

In a previous blog post, I mentioned that newspaper was the medium of choice for real estate advertising in 2012. However, while newspaper accounted for 27.7% of real estate advertising spend, the real estate vertical accounted for only 2.5% of newspaper advertising revenue. Retail (23.5%) and automotive (16%) were actually the largest vertical categories advertising with newspapers in 2012, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Media Ad View Plus.

Approximately 22% of the retail advertising revenue going to newspapers came from one of the 28 retail subcategories broken out in Media Ad View Plus: warehouse clubs and supercenters. For automotive, more than 77% of the advertising revenue going to newspapers came from automotive dealers and manufacturers. This isn’t surprising, as both warehouse clubs/supercenters and automotive dealers/manufacturers have the highest spend in their respective categories across all media.

BIA/Kelsey projects that newspaper advertising revenue will continue falling, reaching $21.3 billion in 2013, a loss of 5.4%. By 2017, BIA/Kelsey expects newspaper’s share of total advertising spend to have continued to decline, falling to just under 12% of total advertising spend. Newspaper advertising revenues are expected to fall from $22.5 billion to $17.8 billion, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of negative 4.7%. This projection places newspaper in third place in advertising spend, behind direct mail and television, but just ahead of radio and online.

With advertising revenue dropping, newspapers are looking for alternative sources of revenue. “Digital pay plans are being adopted at 450 of the country’s 1,380 dailies and appear to be working not just at The New York Times but also at small and mid-sized papers. Twinned with print subscription and single-copy price increases, the digital paywall movement has circulation revenues holding steady or rising. Together with the other new revenue streams, these added circulation revenues are rebalancing the industry’s portfolio from its historic over-dependence on advertising,” says The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s State of the News Media in 2013 report.

BIA/Kelsey projects that in 2012, online represented 13.8% of newspaper’s advertising revenue. This is expected to increase to 20.5% in 2017.

More information on Media Ad View Plus is available here.

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2012 Real Estate Ad Spending by Media

So nearly 28% of real estate ad spending goes to newspaper and 24% goes to online, according to Media Ad View Plus, but where are home buyers actually looking for homes? According to National Association of Realtors in their 2012 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, “nine in 10 home buyers today rely on the internet as one of their primary research sources, and 52 percent turn to the web as their first step.”  As you can see below, while 90% of home buyers might use Internet as a primary research source, the National Association of Realtors reports that only 27% use newspaper ads.

• Internet: 90%
• Real estate agent: 87%
• Yard sign: 53%
• Open house: 45%
• Newspaper ad: 27%
• Home book or magazine: 18%

In a joint study by National Association of Realtors and Google, entitled The Digital House Hunt: Consumer and Market Trends in Real Estate, they found that 89% of new home shoppers used a mobile search engine and that 68% used a mobile application throughout their research process.

Not surprisingly, given the National Association of Realtors and Google’s findings, online advertising spending is expected to grow rapidly.  By 2017, online is expected to be the medium of choice for real estate, with nearly 41% of the advertising pie, according to Media Ad View Plus. Meanwhile, newspaper’s share of the real estate advertising pie is expected to decline, reaching less than 7% by 2017. Mobile is also expected to benefit from the newspaper industry’s continuing decline, as its share increases from 1% to 12.6%.

2017 Real Estate Ad Spending by Media

BIA/Kelsey is projecting online’s revenue share to start surpassing newspaper’s in the Real Estate vertical in 2013.

More information on Media Ad View Plus is available here.

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Traditional media’s rush into digital marketing services as an incremental revenue source is in full swing, with Hearst LocalEdge, GateHouse Media’s Propel, Digital First’s AdTaxi and GannettLocal among those taking aggressive stakes in the opportunity. Now smaller publishers are seeking to capture the tailwind with consultative sales approaches of their own.

But the challenges are diffuse: targeting smaller businesses (micro SMBs) with a scalable offering, handling fulfillment and supporting the popular cross-platform sales mantra.

A cloud-based marketplace platform that has launched to satisfy these publisher concerns is AdStrix. The solution targets newspapers specifically with a coupon-based, trackable suite that spans online, mobile and print.

Yes, print, which AdStrix sees as an important touch point that can be tied to coupon calls to action (SMS short codes and QR codes, for instance). Interactive print is coupled with a digitized version in the publisher’s branded “business-to-consumer portal” (think: local marketplace) as well as a white-labeled, location-based mobile app.

The AdStrix team stresses a few key differentiators from the perspective of both the publisher partner and the SMB (which uses the company’s DIY interface to easily build its own campaigns). All campaigns connect to customized landing pages and are directly tied to calls to action through coupon codes. This enables analytics that extend beyond reach and traffic to isolate redemption recency and frequency. Customer segments can then be built to enable smarter re-targeting.

It’s a simple but potentially effective form of loyalty for SMBs whose database marketing is often unorganized, and whose campaigns often go untracked.

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The consortium of 12 major newspaper companies that last year purchased Travidia, a digital circular vendor, has relaunched as Wanderful Media. The consortium, previously known as ShopCo., has committed $22 Million to the venture. It has also introduced a new tablet version of FindnSave.com, a site that launched last year under the old Travidia regime.

FindnSave enables local newspapers to customize a host of promotions – i.e. deals, coupons, sales, classifieds, inventory — as a single presentation. CEO Ben Smith, a cofounder of Merchant Circle, says that FindnSave is the first of many products that the company hopes to launch. The company is working with 239 local media titles, and has a presence in 47 of the Top 50 markets. It hopes to soon reach 600 unique local websites (many brands have multiple sites).

Smith notes that he’s adding new technology and marketing smarts to the company, including 15 Silicon Valley based employees, who will take a “small team” approach to development. The company has 60 employees with the majority working at its production facility in Chico, CA, north of Sacramento.

The new product was developed based on extensive talks with its 42 national retailer clients. The lean back tablet experience of its new app promises to deeply engage its target customers, says Smith. “It is discovery shopping,” supported by the newspaper industry, which he reminds us, continues to grab $4 Billion a year in ad dollars from retailers.

Smith also cites research showing that the circular form factor remains more engaging than search or display ads for retail. Ultimately, he sees his job as updating the form factor and extending the accounts.

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Last November, major players in the newspaper industry bought Travidia as the cornerstone of a new shopping strategy. Travidia had been mostly known for its print to digital circular business, but it had recently repositioned itself with FindnSave, a new shopping platform that included digital circulars, along with inventory search via eBay’s Milo.com, and slots for deals, offers and coupons.

Investing newspaper companies represented local titles reaching 80 percent of the U.S. population. They included Advance Digital, A.H. Belo Corp., Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., Cox Media Group, The E.W. Scripps Co., Gannett Co., GateHouse Media, Hearst Corp., Lee Enterprises, MediaNews Group, The McClatchy Co. and The Washington Post Co.

Today, FindnSave announced the appointment of Ben T. Smith IV to lead the effort as an outsider more wedded to consumer preferences than to newspaper sales requirements. Smith is the founder of MerchantCircle and previously served as CEO and founder of Spoke.com, a LinkedIn-like social site for professionals.

In a discussion with BIA/Kelsey, Smith noted that FindnSave will have to be both a social experience, utilizing tablets and smartphones, as well as a “lean back” experience. “Shopping is not a lean forward and search” medium, he says. “It is a series of destinations.”

Smith says he plans to bring his experience as a Silicon Valley insider to bear, and in fact, will move the company’s headquarters there from exurban Chico, California. “Six- or seven-person teams make things happen,” he says. “We’ll have a series of teams, including mobile talent and people with a bunch of social DNA. There will also be a series of apps addressing very specific demographics.”

Ultimately, FindnSave will serve “two constituencies — and newspapers aren’t one of them,” says Smith. “The constituencies are consumers and major advertisers. People looking for 49-cent chicken aren’t the same people who are flipping Nordstrom or Macy’s ads,” he observes.

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CEO John Paton (photo, Nieman Lab)

Sometimes, you reach a point where you think all the newspapers should just combine their audiences and online advertising efforts and be smart, big, technologically savvy and competitive with everyone else. Like the combined effort on Cars.com, for instance.

That’s the game plan behind Digital First, a new management effort that allows the forward thinking execs at Journal Register, an 18-title chain in the Northeast, to manage MediaNews Group, the second-largest newspaper company with 57 titles spread out in multiple regions. Together, the companies will have 11,000 employees and 75 newspapers (and 880 print and online products).

While Journal Register and MNG have been motivated by the interests of their joint investor, Alden Global Corp., it seems possible that other newspaper companies might eventually join. Alden bought Journal Register in 2010 and is the largest holder of MediaNews Group.

Journal Register CEO John Paton, for one, has been a vocal proponent of the ongoing value of newspapers in print and online, and has assembled a strong team to execute, including hyperlocal proponent Jim Brady. The reach of the MNG properties should provide more scale to Paton’s efforts.

MNG, itself, for all practical purposes, ends a long history as an industry maverick that sharply cut newsgathering costs (i.e., salaries) and experimented with new formats and services. The company has had a tradition of being an online vendor’s best friend, always willing to take meetings with new companies. But at the same time, its cost-cutting ways resulted in new areas being underfunded.

Recently, MNG has pushed paywalls to block free, non-subscriber access to its content. It has also collapsed its 12 Bay Area titles to two titles, increasing the individual circulation for those titles, but possibly at the cost of less local coverage in print (but perhaps easily segmented online). These strategies may be re-evaluated under the new regime.

At this point, the newspaper industry have several “we’re all in this together” products. Things like the Yahoo Consortium, which has placed national advertising in papers and sold search; the AP; Cars.com; and various national and regional ad nets.

Some work well, but what we’ve seen is that there is no magic bullet. In fact, the impact of newspapers has been a little underwhelming for its partners. Still, newspapers deliver strong retail relationships and a strong and frequent readership (if aging and inevitably dwindling).

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Like Living Social’s earlier deal with The Washington Post, the deal is based on McClatchy’s powerful local promotion capabilities. Groupon deals will be promoted throughout newspaper Web sites in contextually relevant sections (i.e., dining). Print promotion, however, is not part of the deal at this point. Sales also aren’t part of the deal, which is nonexclusive. Other media companies can sign with Groupon both in McClatchy markets and outside them.

Groupon appears very likely to announce other local media deals in the near future — a likelihood driven by the efforts of Business Development VP Sean Smyth, a longtime local media vet with Tribune, Metromix and other local media companies. In general, there is recognition that Groupon has developed a presence in several McClatchy markets without any brand assistance. Groupon will, however, develop custom versions specifically for McClatchy readers.

At our Marketplaces conference last March in San Diego, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason said his early vision was to team with the Chicago Tribune, his hometown paper. But he soon realized that Groupon could roll out faster and with more editorial independence by working solo and relying primarily on telesales. Now, Groupon expects to surpass the Tribune’s circulation in Chicago by year-end. But evidently, newspapers’ local promotion capabilities remain a strong incentive for partnerships.

McClatchy VP Chris Hendricks tells us he sees a net plus for both companies by helping promote Groupon. “They’ve got their space,” but McClatchy offers Groupon more “entry points” to readers and deals, he says.

The deal also enables maximum flexibility for both companies. Conceivably, the Groupon deals could be included in a product suite, he says. The limited nature of the deal, and limited commitment, is also seen as a plus. “We have a lot of stuff going on,” says Hendricks. “An affiliate marketing program fits in better [and] lets us get out of the gate.”

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