Jella Hoffmann, CEO of WEMF, on ComSumCast: «Otherwise, the market would be making decisions in the dark.»

She knows everything there is to know about who uses which media today: Jella Hoffmann has been the head of WEMF AG for Advertising Media Research since 2023. She’s the woman with all the data—and she uses it to debunk a few myths. On the ComSumCast hosted by the Zurich Press Association and the Zurich PR Society, she talks with Reto Lipp about how young people use media today, whether subscriptions are now just for older people, and why podcasts are popular among young people—but not the very young. What exactly does WEMF do today? Why are advertisers more reliant on its data than ever before? And to what extent is AI pushing us into a real media crisis?

When Reto Lipp begins his remarks about the WEMF by saying that it used to be «incredibly important,» Jella Hoffmann immediately corrects him: It is still incredibly important. The mission remains the same: to provide neutral, reliable data for a market that needs to accurately allocate advertising spending. What has changed is the scope: The WEMF, which once almost exclusively certified print circulations and collected readership figures, now covers virtually all media formats and employs 24 people in Zurich as well as about ten at its German subsidiary.

Is everything measurable in the digital world? Not at all!

However, transparency ends precisely where advertising dollars are flowing at the fastest rate—to Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Google. These platforms cannot be audited impartially; instead, they publish only their own figures. «No one from outside can verify the numbers,» says Hoffmann. Added to this is a methodological pitfall that many advertisers underestimate: it’s not people who are being counted, but devices, browsers, or accounts—including company profiles, dog profiles, and historical figures. When LinkedIn reports five million Swiss accounts, there are likely not exactly five million people behind them. The narrative that everything is measurable in the digital world has certainly been «excellently conveyed»—but upon closer inspection, it is «by no means» the case. That is precisely why advertisers today, more than ever, rely on a neutral, comparable database.

In the «Myth Check» segment of the interview, Hoffmann debunks other supposed certainties. Young people don’t watch TV anymore? That’s only significantly less than before if you define it as linear broadcast TV; video content is booming among them via streaming, YouTube, and Netflix. Are newspaper subscriptions now just for older people? Wrong—the «subscription dip» is among 30- to 39-year-olds; before and after that age group, the numbers are rising. Hoffmann finds it fascinating that younger generations have learned to pay for content through Netflix and Spotify—a starting point that could certainly benefit digital newspaper or news subscriptions as well. And the notion that young people only want short videos? “That belongs deep in the myth drawer.” The same young people who scroll through 15-second clips on TikTok also read 800-page Harry Potter books. The picture is similarly nuanced when it comes to podcasts: About 15 percent of the Swiss population listens to podcasts regularly, with the highest usage among 20- to 39-year-olds—not among the very young, as is often assumed.

AI crawlers are scraping content—Jella Hoffmann calls for a level playing field

Hoffmann currently sees the biggest structural change in AI. The so-called «zero-click problem» poses a twofold threat to media companies’ business models: Thanks to generative search, Google provides ready-made answers without users even having to click on Tagi, Blick, or 20 Minuten—and at the same time, AI crawlers are scraping journalistic content without paying for it. Hoffmann isn’t calling for traditional media subsidies here, but rather a “level playing field”—in terms of copyright law, but also regarding the protection of minors, which national media adhere to but global platforms largely do not.

WEMF is also offering support through a new product: the Responsible AI Audit. Media companies can obtain certification from WEMF confirming that they use AI responsibly in their journalistic processes—through policies, training, and controls. When it comes to WEMF’s own audience data, however, Hoffmann remains cautious about the use of AI: «It’s simply not acceptable to say, »Oh, that was just a hallucination.«» And she warns of a structural risk facing the entire industry: AI requires original, accurately collected data. If models were fed only AI-generated content, a degenerative model would emerge—“a bit like if you only married within the same mountain valley for 200 years.”.

In the end, it is precisely this idea that brings everything together for the WEMF director. Reliable media research is important, she says in closing, «because otherwise the market would be making decisions in the dark.».

The podcast episode on Spotify

The full episode of ComSumCast with Jella Hoffmann is available on all major podcast platforms and as a video on YouTube. ComSumCast is a production of the Zurich Press Association and the Zurich PR Society, hosted by Reto Lipp and produced by Christoph Soltmannowski / Castalavista Podcast Factory.