Mike van Niekerk, Editor in Chief Online of Fairfax Media, delivered an impressive presentation called Cashing in on Digital Success at the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna which ended Friday. It was impressive not only in demonstrating how to leverage excellent revenue from a popular and respected news site but also in the numbers presented as the table on the left shows. The full slideshow presentation is available online at the conference website. Van Niekerk demonstrated the many ways Fairfax is able to generate revenue beyond the traditional banner ads. He listed examples of rich media, over the page, half page, leader board, TVCs and sponsored links and went on to say that their problem was lack of inventory.
What I would like to see from Fairfax and the other publishers who presented at the conference is the income and net return per employee and by capital compared to the print operation. Given that publishers must be driven by share price it is the return which will guide them to the tipping point where the success of the online model, with a lower cost base, forces significant contraction of the print model. Please don’t misunderstand my interest – I am not wanting to talk newspapers down but rather have a better “heads up†when considering capital expenditure related to the sale and distribution of newspapers.
As publishers like Fairfax continue to drive their online operations, newsagents, too, must aggressively pursue new traffic and revenue opportunities. Every day we continue to perform the same tasks with the same revenue model is another day lost to the changing world and to our more forward thinking competitors.