Ringier comes up trumps with power duo

Advertising market A new combination of Blick and SonntagsBlick aims to compete with the Metropool in future: from March, anyone who books Blick and SoBli once from Thursday to Saturday or combines SoBli with a Blick placement from Monday to Wednesday will receive an 11 percent discount. "Powerduo" is the name of the package, which promises 1.71 million contacts, a reach of 32.3 percent and a gross CPM of 28 francs (basis: one tabloid page in four colors). According to Ringier, the offer meets a long-standing need. However, the power duo is presumably primarily a response to the Metropool (Tages-Anzeiger, Berner Zeitung, Basler Zeitung). The Blick/SoBli combo trumps the currently largest newspaper combination in German-speaking Switzerland in several respects: the Metropool achieves a reach of 29.1 percent and only 1.19 million contacts, but its CPM of CHF 50.47 is almost twice as high as the Powerduo (albeit in newspaper format). The launch date also points to a rival product to Metropool - just two months after its apparently successful launch. The latter has just announced that its January sales were 18.4 percent higher than those of its predecessor Swisspool a year ago. According to Blick advertising manager Mario Cecchin, Blick sales are only at the previous year's level and SoBli was even slightly down in January.
Nevertheless, Cecchin does not want to be seen as attacking the Metropool. Rather, he said, the new offer was intended to counteract the migration of advertising to electronic media.
(mk)