Ringier focuses on third-party business

 
Marketer Ringier is set to become PubliGroupe's main competitor in the online sector. According to CEO Martin Werfeli, Ringier is killing three birds with one stone with the takeover of the Media Swiss Group: Firstly, the largest Swiss media company is now playing a leading role in the Swiss online market, he said on his own website. Secondly, Ringier will become the leader in the classifieds market. And thirdly, Ringier could use its new know-how to expand internationally. What Werfeli does not say is that as a media company that previously only marketed its own media, Ringier is now taking a major step into third-party business - primarily online, but also in the print sector. The large PubliGroupe group is thus stepping into the garden. This is likely to change the market order in Switzerland.
But first things first: The Media Swiss Group, which Ringier is now acquiring 80 percent of, will generate sales of around CHF 75 million this year. It is based on three pillars: Firstly, there is the wholly-owned subsidiary Media Swiss AG, which is active in the search sector and produces advertising-financed location and city maps. The second pillar is the wholly owned subsidiary XMedia, which develops online marketplaces and offers the online-to-print tool Mediamanager for publishers in particular. It is one of the most important competitor tools to PubliGroupe's Publisherconnect. The third pillar is Scout24's online marketplaces, the group with the highest turnover and earnings in this area in Switzerland.
The Media Swiss Group holds 49.9 percent of this, with Deutsche Telekom owning the remainder. Thanks to around 85 white label partners and the "family members" AutoScout24, ImmoScout24, JobScout24 and FriendScout24, the Scout24 Group has an enormous reach. Via Mediamanager, there are also connections to all major publishing houses, from large daily newspapers to small advertisers. The network is therefore as broad as that of PubliGroupe. In future, Ringier will skim off a portion of the (online) classified advertising revenue of all affiliated publishers, which is likely to put more than just P-related publishers in a dilemma.
And another advantage for Ringier: the Media Swiss subsidiaries Xmedia and Scout24 have never published their own print products. This has always been the core business of the publishing houses. Ringier now has this opportunity wherever there is a print gap in the classifieds market.
Markus Knöpfli