Advertisers' ideas are getting more and more outlandish: on Sunday morning, five Roman chariots, along with their draught horses and fighters, paraded through sleepy Paris in full costume. Those responsible closed the Iéna Bridge at the foot of the Eiffel Tower for the spectacle, as reported by the SDA news agency. The aim of the action is to promote the major production of "Ben Hur", directed by Rober Hossein, which will be staged at the Stade de France in September. The play will be performed over five days and 300,000 spectators are expected.

The Aargau youth radio project "Power FM" will go back on air next Saturday for a month - probably for the last time. The radio station produces a majority youth program and has been on air three times since 2001. However, its future is uncertain.
September 2 will probably be the last time the radio station will be launched in its current form. This is because a complaint to the Federal Office of Communications demands that the radio is no longer licensed.

Mario Gutknecht, initiator and director of "Power FM", did not want to tell SDA who had filed the complaint. A 24-hour program is planned, Gutknecht said. More than ten young creators work for the radio station on a voluntary basis. News would be broadcast every hour in the daytime program. Special programs are scheduled for the evenings.

During the broadcasting period in September 2005, radio "Power FM" had an average of
33,600 listeners reached per day, on peak days
96,000 listeners. The figures were determined by Radiocontrol.

The media and advertising intermediary PubliGroupe achieved a net profit of CHF 28.6 million in the first half of 2006. Sales increased by 2.9 percent to CHF 1,035 million. All business activities increased, PubliGroupe reported on Monday.
In the first half of the year, the Vaud-based company did not perform quite as well as in the previous year, when it reported a profit of CHF 46.7 million, boosted by increases in the value of the securities portfolio. The financial result was at a normal level. However, excluding these increases in value, the net result improved by 1.9 percent compared to the previous year.

Improvement in all main segments As expected, advertising expenditure in the developed markets remained stable or increased only slightly, according to PubliGroupe. Asia and the online media as well as categories of electronic media showed a more dynamic development than the print media. However, the print media successfully defended their continued strong position.

The biggest contribution to the 2.9 percent increase in sales came from the international division Publicitas Promotion Network (PPN), which grew by 18.6 percent, and from the "Business under development" segment (Consulting/E-Business, Electronic, Digital & Interactive Media), which increased by 36.6 percent. PubliDirect grew by 1.7 percent and PubliPresse declined slightly by 0.9 percent.

Strong increase in "Business under development" The investments made in 2005 for the development of the Group in the areas of online and electronic media (see
Publigroupe aims for a top position with electronic media) have paid off. In the half-year results as at July 2006, the business in the "Consulting/E-Business Electronic, Digital & Interactive Media" division achieved an increase in sales of 36.6 percent to CHF 40.3 million. This means that the Group has almost reached break-even.
The consulting company Namics increased its turnover by 45.9 percent to CHF 13 million. Further expansion is expected.

Cinecom increased its sales by 32% to CHF 23.3 million. Cinema advertising increased by 9 percent. Cinecom is now benefiting from the digitalization of cinema advertising - the cinema medium is now more attractive for local advertising orders. Television advertising increased by 35% and the representation of the new channel 3+ is expected to lead to a further increase in sales.

Web2com, the marketer of advertising in interactive media, grew by 59.3% and generated sales of CHF 5 million. This segment was therefore in the black for the first time.

PubliDirect at a high level The PubliDirect business segment increased sales by 1.7 percent to a high level of CHF 52.6 million - despite expansion costs for the new Local.ch search engine and expansion of the shareholdings in The Guide Company (see
PubliGroupe expands its stake in The Guide Company).
Sales of local telephone directories increased by 12 percent, while the printed Yellow Pages grew by 4 percent with an unchanged circulation.
PubliPresse in a difficult environment PubliGoupe reports that the marketing of advertising by the Swiss press and its online services took place in a difficult and competitive environment with high volatility. Sales fell by 0.9 percent to 767.7 million. PubliPresse suffered from the decline in commercial advertising. For the first time in three years, real estate advertising also declined (-3.4 percent). Only job advertisements showed an unbroken growth trend with an increase of 18.7 percent.
International marketing of press advertising The Publicitas Promotion Network (PPN) division, which markets press advertising internationally, increased sales by 18.6% to CHF 183.9 million. Business in Asia/Australia was particularly successful (+24%) and business in Europe also recovered noticeably (+23.3%). North and South America remained negative (-7.7 percent).

Outlook PubliGrouope no longer expects a turnaround in the advertising market this year. The trends observed in the advertising market in the first half of the year will continue in the second half. Sales should continue to increase thanks to foreign markets and electronic media. The marketer of radio advertising, RadioTele AG, which has been integrated into the Group since July 2006, will also contribute to this. The company plans to invest a further CHF 8 million in the further development of the business. Although the operating result was in line with analysts' expectations, the PubliGroupe share fell slightly in trading by midday.

A new copywriter and a new copywriter joined the McCann Erickson Zurich team at the beginning of August. Prior to her move, Chantal Panozzo wrote various campaigns for the American agency The Martin Agency for three years. She also taught copywriting at Virginia Commonwealth University. Rolando Baron, known from Sulzer,Sutter, Publicis and Weber,Harbeke, brings almost ten years of experience as a copywriter to McCann Erickson. His work has already won several awards - including from ADC and the New York Festivals. The consultancy management team is also being strengthened. Monica Fischer is moving from McCann Erickson Frankfurt to Zurich as Group Account Director. In Germany, she was responsible for Deutsche Bank's global brand campaign, the investment banking campaign and internal communications. For the CDU, Fischer managed the Bundestag election campaigns and the European Council elections. In Zurich, Monica Fischer is now responsible, among other things, for looking after the client Credit Suisse. Thomas Rom has also joined the consultancy team. He has experience on both the agency and client side.

In the battle between the top dogs to secure the largest possible share of the global advertising pie, the next piece of news comes from Google: On Monday, eBay's agency Weber Shandwick announced a multi-year cooperation for advertising on the web with the web auctioneer Ebay.
The cooperation primarily comprises text ads and "click-to-call" functionality. The tests will start in spring 2007. "Click-to-call" enables an Internet telephone call to providers or advertisers at the click of a mouse.
According to the press release, Google will exclusively supply third-party advertisements for Ebay Internet sites outside the USA. Ebay had previously cooperated with Yahoo and will continue to do so in the USA. The companies did not provide any financial details of the agreements. Ebay merely stated that they would not have a significant impact on its results in 2006 or 2007.

Publicitas International is intensifying its activities in the field of interactive media. Michèle Szczepanski has been Sales Director Interactive Media since August. She was previously Account Executive at the online marketer Web2com.
This expansion of the core competence requires sound know-how, and this is guaranteed by Michèle Szczepanski, Publicitas announced on Monday. The synergies between Publicitas International and Web2com can thus also be optimally utilized.

Since last weekend, the largest advertising page in Switzerland has been hanging in the middle of Schaffhausen's old town. For around two months, it is intended to highlight the advertisement as an attractive advertising medium on the front of the Schaffhauser Nachrichten newspaper. According to a press release, the huge 120-square-metre page, which is based on the campaign of the Swiss Press Association, clearly shows that only an advertisement can have a big impact. The campaign was launched on the occasion of a facade renovation at the Schaffhauser Nachrichten property. The largest advertisement in Switzerland will remain up until mid-October.

The editor-in-chief of the Geneva daily Tribune de Genève, Dominique von Burg (60), is giving up his post. He will only work for the local editorial office, the publishing house Edipresse announced on Monday. His successor is to be appointed within a reasonable period of time.
Von Burg has headed the editorial team since 2000 and will hand over the chief editor position before the redesign of the newspaper announced for this fall. The last facelift was carried out in November 2004. Von Burg had already stated at the time that this was the last major challenge he wanted to tackle as editor-in-chief.

The 60-year-old can look back on a long career as a journalist, reports the SDA news agency. It began at the Tribune de Genève and led him to French-speaking Swiss television in 1979, where he produced the program "Temps Présent" and was editor-in-chief of the Tagesschau.

Swisscom Fixnet is presenting an expanded radio offering on Bluewin.ch as of September 7. Users can access most Swiss radio stations via the portal and now also receive the offer via IP radio devices. The expansion will make Swisscom Fixnet the "largest Swiss distributor of radio signals on the Internet", according to a press release.  
Bluewin was launched in December 2005 (see
listening to the radio via the Bluewin portal) with the offer. This was initially expanded from twelve contractual partners from German-speaking countries to around 40 radio stations from German-, French- and Italian-speaking regions. The public radio stations of Swiss Radio DRS are now also available. Further expansion is planned for the end of 2006. The IP receivers, which enable radio consumption via Beitbrand, are available in all Swisscom stores.

In close cooperation with the web agency Fauxpas, the Zücher communications agency Rotor developed a completely new agency website. The aim was to create a simple and therefore all the more informative site in the confusing jungle of Java and Flash pages, which would convey relevant information in the shortest possible time. "A user has seen the entire website after 32 clicks and is therefore well informed about our agency and the reference projects within a maximum of 2 minutes," explains Alexander Gessert, CD and co-owner of Rotor.

Coop is massively expanding its online supermarket. The range will be tripled with immediate effect, Coop announced in a press release. This means that more than 10,000 products can now be ordered online.
Success story Coop launched the online supermarket 5 years ago. In 2005, the Coop online supermarket generated sales of CHF 25 million with 140,000 deliveries, 57 percent more than in the previous year. 70 percent of customers are women, mostly working and with children. For 76 percent of customers, there is no more than one day between the order date and the delivery date. For the current year, Coop expects sales of over 40 million Swiss francs for the online supermarket and wine store. According to the press release, break-even should be reached in 2008.
Largest range With the largest online range in Switzerland, Coop now covers the needs of a weekly shop. In addition, the wine store contains more than 1000 wines. The prices of the products in the online store are exactly the same as in the stores. From September, customers will also benefit from most of the promotions in the Coop stores.

The more television channels that can be received, the less this potential is exploited. This is the conclusion of a German study published in the specialist journal "Media Perspektiven", reported the NZZ on Friday. The study examined the question of how much viewing time the program offerings contribute to the total television usage of individual viewers in Germany. The result is astonishing: the most popular channel already covers a third of total television usage; two channels cover a good 50 percent, and 10 channels 92 percent of television usage (study period 1st quarter 2006).

Less is more The concentration on a small number of channels is particularly high when looking at short periods of time - such as individual days. A look at the individual receivable channels shows that even with over 100 channels, 90 percent of television usage comes from 10 channels.
ARD, ZDF and RTL are the leading channels An analysis of the viewing habits of people with very high and very low television consumption shows that people with low television consumption concentrate on just a few channels. However, even among frequent viewers, the majority of television viewing consists of only 10 channels. Genre preferences play no role in the number of channels used, writes the NZZ. The leading channels with almost equal rankings are ARD, ZDF and RTL.