I am curious about the move by Telstra owned Sensis to bring their West Australian title, Autotrader, to the rest of the country. When sales of other classifieds magazines are in deep decline and the Sensis flagship print title Trading Post is flat in some areas and in free fall in others why bring another print classifieds product in? Given the focus on dealer ads, I don’t see this as a print only play. Autotrader is more likely to be an extra value offer to online advertisers. List in Yellow Pages and other Sensis online properties and get into Autotrader as part of the deal. It makes sense to me – being online and in print.
For newsagents Autotrader is grabbing space on crammed shelves and using the low cost newsagent channel to give the title retail presence. I suspect that Sensis knows what newsagents know – the vehicle section of a newsagency is the most popular for browsers. Blokes spend anything from ten minutes to an hour browsing the magazines – classifieds magazines especially. You see them look through and note down contact details for cars which interest them.
The cynic in me says this is a browser play by Sensis – a shopper browser play. Getting into newsagencies they get Autotrader browsed. I doubt you’ll see Autotrader in petrol, convenience and supermarket outlets because in those places people don’t browse magazines.
Newsagents ought to be paid for real-estate and labour invested in titles which do not generate a profitable return. Sensis ought to compensate newsagents for making their advertising successful without the need for a punter to purchase the title.
Newsagents allow this situation by not being commercial and placing a value on their real-estate and labour. Good luck to Sensis for exploiting this.