Speaker : Jean-Christophe Demarta, Senior Vice President Global Advertising at The NY Times / vice président de la publicité internationale au New York Times
To kick off his conference on the future of media advertising, Jean-Christophe Demarta poses familiar questions: Is journalism going through a crisis? Is advertising going through a crisis? Are the two linked?
Statistics show a steady increase in advertising dollars spent over the years, but a more thorough examination reveals a rapid increase in digital advertising and, simultaneously, a drastic decrease in print advertising.
Google and Facebook have set the rules of digital advertising according to what works for them, but those rules don’t work for everybody. Despite bad press for Google and Facebook, marketers are usually willing to accept digital advertising that is often intrusive. For Mr. Demarta, the situation looks bleak, with Amazon planning to enter the advertising marketplace in the near future, and 3/4 of all advertising dollars going to a handful of tech giants, like Google and Facebook.
The New York Times, for whom advertising dollars have always had an important role, is resisting the control of the digital advertising market by the tech giants. They seek to cater to readers who become paying customers, and this strategy is working pretty well: the New York Times can count 4 million subscribers, and their stock price has risen fairly consistently since 2013. But that doesn’t mean they are ignoring advertising, which is still a major source of revenue.
In this hostile advertising environment, Mr. Demarta emphasized the role that publishers have in determining how advertising is done, and privileges prestige brand marketing over the old model of performance marketing, which he says will never again be profitable for newspapers. He finishes by laying out 5 approaches to change the current advertising situation:
- Change the conversation on ad effectiveness.
- Rethink the ad experience for the reader.
- Continue to develop meaningful brand content.
- Diversification of services: there are many approaches.
- Print still offers value and creativity (it’s still the majority of ad revenue).
Crédits photo: Ulysse Bellier