I am always leery of reports that point to a “Scandinavian miracle” (or a “Massachusetts miracle” or what have you). But a December 2007 NAA Growing Audience report has some valuable details about how Schibsted Media, the Scandinavian publishing giant with additional properties in France, Spain and Switzerland, has begun to re-make itself for the digital age.
The report, by David LaFontaine, says that Schibsted sees up to 60 percent of 2008 revenues might come from interactive –vastly higher than the 8-10 percent contribution made to U.S. newspaper revenues (and perhaps overstated). Key to its online revenue is its ability to keep its newspapers as destinations, rather than relying on Google. Ninety percent of the traffic to VG.no, for instance, comes directly to the site due to its hosting of a robust search engine and addition of video, social media and mobile apps.
About 38 percent of adults read the print edition, but almost 50 percent of the Norwegian market uses a VG product—print, online or mobile—every day. “Our target is to pass 60 percent,” CEO Kjell Aarmot told LaFontaine. “We call that building an audience, even though we’re slowly, slowly eroding our print audience.”
The traffic to VG.no is impressive, though the design is reminiscent of the 2003s or 2004s :)
Doug: VG is quite proud of having such an ugly website, they claim it’s instrumental to their success. I’m not sure I follow them on this, but interesting argument (follow the links in the post I link up here for more on VG’s design philosophy): http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2008/03/10/online-journalism-scandinavia-norways-leading-news-sites-strategies-for-attracting-online-audience
Aftonbladet (Also Schibsted) in Sweden is experiencing the same success on the web. Slightly more attractive site, but still ugly.