How readers and advertisers affect and are affected by the digital transformation - inspiration to a digital newspaper strategy.
The media company's employees, along with advertisers and readers, influence and are influenced by the newspaper's development from print to digital, and from newspaper distribution to media brand. Here are seven examples of this development, which have been taken from actual new digital media trends and products.
1. The morning edition comes out the night before
A growing number of media houses are opting to publish digital versions of their newspapers immediately after sending the physical paper edition to print. Readers have welcomed this trend and fresh business news generates evening traffic on web browsers, smartphones and tablets.
"Overall, reader habits have changed primarily due to technology, particularly on iPad, but from 2010 to 2013, reader numbers of the electronic newspaper have tripled. We've seen a particular increase in our digital readership after 10:30 pm, so you can safely say that reader habits are changing dramatically," says news editor Jørgen Andresen of Børsen.
"I really like the selected, prioritised content, which continues to serve as the newspapers' forte. I've also noticed that I've gone from reading the news in the morning to in the evening. I generally only read our newspapers when they're digitally released in the evening."
Stig Kirk Ørskov, CEO of JP/Politikens Hus, in a statement made to Jyllands-Posten on 4 March 2013
2. More readers opting for digital subscriptions
The German newspaper Nordwest-Zeitung (NWZ) is experiencing a welcome increase in its subscription base. With 15.000 ePaper subscriptions, the digital edition accounts for nearly 14 percent of NWZ’s total subscriber base.
“We have three branches – print, web and ePaper - and the latter is getting more and more important. Many print readers are switching to the ePaper because it’s easier to use, more on time, and, at the same time, it’s less expensive. Our ePaper costs about 27 euro and in comparison, it’s about 8-10 euros more if you want the printed newspaper delivered to your home depending on where you live," says Dirk Poelmann, Senior Product Manager at NWZ.
Learn more about how NWZ managed to boost the influx of digital subscriptions. here.
3. New digital advertising options
New advertising formats used in newspaper apps for smartphones and tablets are seeing a surge in growth in 2014. Ads that resemble full-page spreads – but which have interactive functionality – are one of the most popular formats among media companies.
One of northern Germany's largest media companies sh:z das medienhaus has found that new digital advertising products are increasingly in demand among advertisers.
Interstitials, often interactive and clickable ads that are inserted between the pages of a digital newspaper's smartphone or tablet version, are particularly popular among advertisers.
"Some days we're forced to turn advertisers away because we've decided to limit output to three interstitials on any one day," says Svenja Degner, Product Manager Digital at sh:z, mh:n Medien and NOZ Medien.
Interstitials have been a highly valuable source of revenue for the German media house, but Svenja Degner tells that it took some testing and experimentation before it was up and running.
“At first we sold our interstitials for a whole week. But we found out that nobody wanted to click on an interstitial, they already had seen the day before. So now we only sell for single days, and we’ve also learned a lot about the layout of a good interstitial and things like that. It sounds easy now, but it was a long way getting there,” she recalls and shares some free advice:
“It’s a really good idea to start with a few interstitials to get readers used to it. Try making it interesting by putting things behind the interstitials - like a quiz or special offer-advertisements. That way the readers are more likely to click on it and you’ll get a good click through rate and happy costumers.”
4. Digital-only newspapers on the rise
Even if a newspaper does not come out in print, it can still resemble its paper counterpart. Many media companies are publishing digital-only versions of their newspapers on days that are otherwise newspaper-free, i.e. at weekends and on holidays. In Sweden, 39,000 readers – which equals one third of the total subscribers – downloaded the digital version of Sydsvenskan on All Saints' Day.
"We've started to publish the digital newspaper 365 days a year, that is, also on the days when there's no printed edition of the paper. For each of these 'paperless days,' we've seen growth in our readership. Prior to All Saints' Day, when there would be no printed edition, we made an extra effort to communicate the fact that the newspaper would be coming out as usual, but in a digital edition only, and this appears to have had an effect," says Business Developer Pontus Jeppsson of Sydsvenskan.
5. Online evening editions see the light of day
In March 2018, German newspaper sh:z took new measures and started publishing a special evening edition that comes out every night from Sunday-Friday at 7 o'clock. They had seen the impact this type of publication made for their colleagues at NOZ Medien who had previously implemented the same feature in their solution with great succes.
"We have a lot of our news ready already in the evening but first present them about 10 o'clock when the newspaper is ready. So, we wanted to fill up the space from about 7 o'clock in the evening where people have time to engage with our news. And it was the first step to present our news in a non-PDF or non-paper edition," explains Svenja Degner, Product Manager Digital at sh:z, mh:n Medien and NOZ Medien.
The evening edition, which is called Abendmagazin, is created in a tool called Content Cockpit that the German media house developed in collaboration with Basecom. You can read more about the Abendmagazin and sh:z's new ePaper app in this blog post.
Also the Finish morning newspaper Hufvudstadsblade, launched a digital edition back in January 2014 which comes out daily at 4 pm. Hbl Kväll, as the evening edition is called, is included in all of the media company's digital packages, and the purpose of the new evening edition is to prompt more readers to use its digital products.
More than 10,000 subscribers read the first issue, a figure that pleases the media company immensely:
"This is more than we've ever signed up before. We're very pleased that so many subscribers have registered digitally," says digital director Fredrik Nars of KSF Media.
"32 percent of Hbl's subscribers have already registered, and that number is rising," says Nars.
According to editor-in-chief Jens Berg, Hbl Kväll is satisfying a demand among readers.
"Hbl has become the first Nordic newspaper to come out twice daily, and this is the result of intensive tests of our readership. Hbl Kväll is hardly the solution to all of the industry's problems, but it does meet a need that many of our current and potential readers have made explicit," Berg explains.
6. Newspaper archives generate traffic and sales
Newspaper archives are one of the digital areas in which readers have not become accustomed to obtaining free content. Experience has shown that search access to newspaper archive content is a feature that readers will gladly pay for, just as the availability of such an option serves to retain current subscribers and attract new ones.
Back in late 2016, Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet launched their more than 130 years old archive which contains scans from microfilm and print newspapers as well as all their digital editions.
"The archive is an exciting exposé of Swedish journalism and how Svenska Dagbladet was present and wrote about historic events as they unfolded. It is a great pleasure to make this heritage available to our subscribers," said Fredric Karén, editor in chief of Svenska Dagbladet at the launch.
Svenska Dagbladet has experienced a big interest in their archive - not only form Sweden, but from all over the world. As a result, the traffic numbers went through the roof and continue to generate traffic in their app.
In Norway, Aftenposten was one of the first newspapers to offer its readers a searchable, digital archive. Some 1.7 million pages spanning the publication's 154-year history can now be searched through on computers, smartphones and tablets.
At the launch of the service the number of visitors to the paper's homepage tripled, and archive activity remains high to this day.
"It's a product that we're regularly consider with respect to our digital strategy; there's no doubt that it strengthens our digital initiatives", said Stig Breyholtz, former Head of Digital Operations for Aftenposten's reader market.
7. Big data enables fact-based decision making
As consumers continue to turn to digital platforms, media companies gain new possibilities for tracking readers' activity, habits and preferences, which in turn creates new opportunities for converting data into knowledge that can be used to make decisions. And better than ever before, media companies can now provide both advertisers and journalists with documentation based on hard data.
"Knowledge of user behaviour provides a better basis for making decisions for future digital strategies," says Nicolas Fromm, digital director of sh:z das medienhaus, which publishes a number of newspapers in northern Germany, and which has implemented new methods to obtain knowledge of readers' behaviour on digital platforms.
The media company has set a number of performance metrics that can show its employees how and where a newspaper is read in real time. These metrics can inform editorial strategies and influence advertising and newspaper sales in connection with documenting effect, user behaviour and user preferences.
Examples of business intelligence for digital newspapers data that can be shown in real time:
- Number of times a publication has been downloaded (compared with for instance the same time the week before and anonymised index figures from comparable media houses)
- Which articles are being read
- Which ads are being seen and clicked on throughout the day
- Readers' geographic locations
- Which platforms readers are using
