At the WAN 2005 World Newspaper Advertising Conference & Expo held in Rome, Italy, on 24 and 25 February, participants were presented with case studies of innovative ways to take advantage of what remains the best medium for advertising: the newspaper.

Newspapers Defend Their Common Interests
For a nation of 10 million people, Hungarians have an overwhelming choice of media -- 25 TV channels, 150 radio stations, 50 websites, 150 magazines, 10 national daily newspapers and 18 local and regional newspapers. Television’s advertising market share surpassed newspapers for the first time in 2004. Newspapers argued that their audience was more desirable, but the advertisers weren’t convinced.

Major publishing houses got a similar feedback from the market: TV-spending is going further, dailies are losing its previous clients, advertisers, big magazines sharing its readers (and revenues) with newcomers, fragmentation, radios pushing its benefits, Internet became a real rival to print.

What could be done?

Andras Math, Research and Communications Director of the Hungary division of international media company Ringier, presented his experience with a group of 17 newspapers and the Hungarian Newspaper Association, who all banded together to undertake a massive advertising study to set the record straight on the effectiveness of newspaper advertising.

The study looked at media consumption, attitudes toward advertising in different media, effectiveness of television and newspaper campaigns, brand awareness, and awareness of creative elements in advertising, among other topics.

Some of the findings of the study, which was carried out between September and October 2004:
  Like most people, Hungarians find television advertising annoying: 57 percent said they were annoyed by the ads, compared with only 5 percent who found newspaper ads disturbing.
  The study found that only 6% of TV viewers are sitting in front of their TV set and carefully watching the advertising-breaks
  The study also found that message transfer is increased by more than 30% if the campaign is also published in print. Print is also more effective than television in influencing buying decisions.

The DNA of advertisements
The RAM database -- RAM stands for Research and Analysis of Media -- is a massive collection of information consisting of more than 1.2 million individual advertising observations from 25 newspapers and their readers in Sweden, Norway and -- coming soon -- the United States.

The presentation by Mr Damstedt and Mr Wilberg described how RAM works and examined how its helps participating newspapers build their advertising business. It not only can provide a global analysis of the data, but individual newspapers can use it to survey and report back in "real time" to advertisers on the effectiveness of their ad campaigns -- it only takes 48 hours from survey to report.

Both newspapers and reader panels contribute information to RAM, which includes information on the advertisements (size, colour, frequency, etc.), the newspapers (format, circulation etc.) and from the panels (demographics and habits as well as advertisement they have observed, read and remembered).

RAM produces what Mr Wilberg called "the DNA" of advertisements measuring such variables as observation, brand awareness, appeal and usefulness. It also provides some general findings on advertising effectiveness. For example:
  The more of the newspaper you read, the more ads you see. But even people who read substantially less of the newspaper see a significant number of ads.
  Advertisement observation increases with age.
  For the most part, size does matter; the bigger the ad, the more people observe it. Yet there is little difference between the observation rates of full page and half page ads.
  Inserts are interesting -- they are observed by more readers than any single section of the newspaper.
  Colour is best -- full colour ads are observed at higher rates than any other ads.
  Picture intensive ads are seen and remembered more frequently than text intensive ads.

Mr Darmstedt and Mr Wilberg also presented case studies of how individual newspapers used the data to accelerate their advertising businesses.

Doubled sales for mustard manufacturer Ingvar Sandvik, Associate Directorof TNS Gallup, Norway, and Helge Holbaek-Hansen, Newspaper Marketing Director of the Norwegian Media Businessess Association presented a case study on how they set about to prove the effectiveness of pure newspaper advertising.

The Norwegian Media Businessess’ Association have launched The Norwegian Advertising Effectiveness Study, a three-year project financed by major newspaper groups, the paper producer Norske Skog, and carried out by TNS Gallup.

"Readership figures and coverage is one thing. Ad effectiveness is something quite different," says Ms Holbaek-Hansen, who said the project would supply the market with "exciting new information and documentation."

And the first results are in: newspaper advertising works. Just ask the mustard manufacturer Edmond Fallot, which saw its sales double through the first campaign carried out by the Advertising Effectiveness Study. Mr Sandvik and Ms Holbaek-Hansen described a "pure" newspaper advertising campaign -- no other marketing activities were involved or influenced the results.

The data showed that the campaign had strong motivational effects that doubled sales, built brand awareness and strengthened brand position, and increased consumers’ commitment to the product.

Other campaigns will follow.