Seven One Media's monthly survey of Swiss media agencies on the development of the advertising market and advertising investment in television has shown that the financial crisis is also having an impact on TV advertising investment. The forecast for investments in September has fallen from 4.5 percent to minus 1.9 percent.
Seven One's question of the month, this time on the future changes in the medium of television, revealed that 88% of agencies agree with the statement that television will largely retain its position as the most important lead medium. In contrast, Swiss media agencies believe that cinema and radio will not be able to expand their positions in the changing media market.

The financial and economic crisis is hitting the media: advertising expenditure in the daily press fell in September compared to the previous year. The Publicitas Index fell by 1.3 points to 94.0 points.
However, it should be noted that there was one Saturday less in September this year than in the previous year, Publicitas announced on Friday. As in previous months, commercial advertising in the national market was not very dynamic. According to Publicitas, the major advertisers in particular held back.
Job advertisements have also fallen. They fell by 1.9 points to 197.6 points. This index had reached a peak in May and has fluctuated at a high level since then. The index for real estate advertisements fell by 1.5 points to 73.5 points. These advertisements have been declining for two years.

Rolf Kälin, former Creative Director and member of the Mach management team, is stepping down from his position. By mutual agreement, the Baden-based agency Mach and Kälin have decided to part ways with immediate effect, as the agency announced in a press release.
Louis Dreyer, Managing Owner and President of the Board of Directors, will take over the projects previously managed by Rolf Kälin. The management of Mach is to be strengthened in the foreseeable future.

Three out of four Germans between the ages of 14 and 64 use the Internet, more than half of them several times a day. According to Werben & Verkaufen, this is the result of the Allensbach Computer and Technology Analysis (Acta) published on Thursday. As the proportion of users has risen, so has the daily usage time: Around half of surfers spend more than an hour a day on the web. However, respondents are concerned about data protection: more than half fear that personal data is not protected online.
However, according to the study, the internet is only of minor importance for obtaining information on current events. The most important sources of information for internet users are television (74% of online users) and newspapers (51%). The Internet only accounts for 36%, but is growing steadily.
A good fifth of all surfers watch TV via the Internet, and this figure is almost a third among the under-30s. In both groups, however, there is only a small proportion of frequent users. A total of 30 percent of respondents listen to the radio via the Internet. TV programs are recorded online less and less frequently - less than half of users do so.

Just under half of 14 to 19-year-olds are members of a community, compared to only 16% of 30 to 39-year-olds. Print brands are increasingly being used online. Spiegel.de has just under three million users per week, Bild.de 2.5 million and Stern.de just under 1.7 million. Google has the most users per week, followed by Ebay, Wikipedia, T-Online, Web.de, Youtube and Gmx.de.

A new start-up on the right bank of Lake Zurich: the new PR and brand consulting agency 360 Brand Connection has opened in Thalwil. The official inauguration took place at the beginning of October. Agency owner Pirmin Oklé plans to offer a "practical, integrated platform" for brands from the offices in the Blaue Fabrik, which is fed by his experience in the marketing sector. His agency is to become a permanent point of contact for stylists and editors. Sport, sportswear and fashion are the focal points that Oklé has set himself. The new spatial conditions should inspire him in his work: A room height of over 4.5 meters and plenty of light stimulate creative ideas in the office with its own showroom, writes the owner and managing director in a press release on Thursday.
The German partner Andreas Breitfeld has been running a PR agency in Munich for several years under the name 360 Public Relation.

Universal Music Group International has extended its license agreement with the online portal Qtrax for the territories of Europe, Asia/Pacific, South America and Africa. In May of this year, the Universal Music Group company had already negotiated a similar agreement with the platform for the USA.
Qtrax offers the songs - according to its own information, over 250,000 titles are available - free of charge and legally. The only thing that is not possible is burning the songs to CD. The project is financed by advertising that is placed before and after the download process.

The World Association of Newspapers Digital Publishing Conference ended on Wednesday with an urgent appeal to the newspaper industry. "Newspapers need to be as experimental as possible when it comes to securing their own future on the internet," Caroline Little, former managing director of the online arm of the US newspaper Washington Post, told the assembled international newspaper industry. As the Guardian reports, Little painted a rather pessimistic picture of the current situation and future development of the industry. The newspaper industry is "shrouded in an unprecedented amount of gloom and doom", which is increasing the economic pressure on companies. Even the Internet, seen by many as a "gold mine", has not yet managed to get the revenue streams of newspapers flowing again, Little said according to the press release.
"Today, even media companies that used to achieve indecently high profit margins are struggling to maintain their profits," explained the online expert. Foreign offices and research departments are currently being closed down by the dozen. In the current economic climate, it is also difficult to imagine that potentially promising areas such as digital distribution will provide companies with rich revenue streams. "Despite huge audiences and enormous reach, the revenue that newspapers generate from their online offerings is still too low compared to their print counterparts," Little noted. As concrete examples, she cited the New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which are among the top earners in the industry on the Internet. In both cases, the ratio of online to print sales remains below 20 percent. This is not even close to sufficient, Little emphasized.
In her opinion, the main problem lies in the fact that the majority of newspapers still use their internet presence exclusively to publish their existing print content online. "We need to broaden our horizons and not be afraid to try something new. If you remain too conservative, you risk losing everything," Little concluded.

The car magazine Auto Bild will also be published in Romania from Friday. The magazine will be launched there by the licensor, the German publishing house Axel Springer, in cooperation with the Swiss media company Edipresse. "The Romanian magazine market, like the entire Eastern European region, continues to offer great potential. The reactions of advertising customers already confirm our expectations of success," Tim Besser, International Licensing Director of Axel Springer, was quoted as saying in a press release on Thursday. Auto Bild Romania will be published every two weeks with an initial print run of 21,000 copies. The issue price is 3.9 Ron, approximately 1.07 euros.
Edipresse AS Romania already publishes two licensed titles from Axel Springer, Computer Bild and Popcorn. Auto Bild, which according to Springer is the world's highest-circulation car magazine, is published in 33 different editions and reaches around 40 million readers worldwide.

The Hamburg-based printing and publishing house Gruner + Jahr is putting the brakes on costs. As the business news service Kress reported on Thursday, the company intends to let go of almost 60 employees. They will receive a redundancy offer these days, which they can accept until the end of November. The offer provides for a fixed amount of 50,000 euros as well as payments that are staggered according to length of service.
The austerity measure apparently has nothing to do with the current crisis on the financial markets. It has allegedly been in preparation since the summer. The publishing house told Kress that no redundancies are "currently" planned. It has already imposed a hiring freeze in response to the financial crisis and the uncertain stock market situation.
Gruner + Jahr, the largest printing and publishing house in Europe, publishes titles including Stern, Geo, Financial Times Deutschland, Gala, Brigitte and P.M.. It is almost 75 percent owned by the Bertelsmann Group.

The Canton of Zurich is conducting a public, two-stage tendering process to select the future corporate design partner. In the first phase, specialists, studios and agencies were able to apply in writing. 76 agencies submitted their applications by August 29, 2008. The government council selected four agencies for the second phase (competitive presentation), following the jury's recommendation: Scholtysik Niederberger Kraft, Zurich, made it to first place. Second place went to Wirz Corporate, Zurich. Third place was shared by the agencies Büro 4, Zurich and Feurer Network, Zurich.
These agencies have been tasked with developing concept and design proposals and submitting a comprehensive cost estimate by mid-January 2009. They will each receive compensation of CHF 10,000. After the competing presentations, the jury will apply to the government council to award the contract for the implementation of the corporate design to one of the agencies.

The Federal Court has confirmed the guilty verdicts against SF chief editor Ueli Haldimann and three others responsible for secretly filming the "Kassensturz" program, as reported by SDA. The report concerned irregularities in insurance advice.
In February 2003, "Kassensturz" secretly filmed consultations between insurance agents and a decoy in a private apartment. One of the advisors made a particularly questionable impression with his information. The recording was broadcast at the end of March. The man's face and voice had been distorted.
In 2007, the Zurich High Court found editor-in-chief Ueli Haldimann, the then head of "Kassensturz" Hansjörg Utz and two editors involved guilty. Unlike the previous single judge of the Dielsdorf district, it considered the offences of recording other people's conversations and violating the confidential and private sphere by means of recording devices to be fulfilled. It sentenced the parties concerned to conditional fines of between 5 and 15 daily rates of 30 to 350 francs each.
Following an appeal by the convicted parties, the Federal Supreme Court has now overturned the conviction for breach of secrecy and privacy, as this charge was not included in the indictment. On the main point, it confirmed the verdicts and ordered the appellants to pay three quarters of the court costs. According to the Lausanne judges, the action in question cannot be justified by the protection of legitimate interests or journalistic professional duties.
The case will now go back to the high court, which will have to redetermine the penalties. Swiss Television also wants to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, as the broadcaster announced in the Tagesschau.

Internet auction house Ebay has continued to do good business despite ongoing economic concerns. However, Ebay lowered its expectations for the year as a whole. According to SDA, the group announced a net profit of 492 million dollars for the third quarter, following a loss of 936 million dollars in the same period last year. Ebay had to take write-downs in 2007 due to the Internet telephony provider Skype.
Earnings per share amounted to 46 cents on an adjusted basis, while analysts polled by Reuters had expected 41 cents. Turnover rose by twelve percent to 2.12 billion dollars.
However, the outlook for the fourth quarter was worse than expected. Ebay shares fell by 1.83 dollars to 13.50 dollars after the announcement of the data, having already fallen by 14 percent to 15.33 dollars by the close of trading.