Direct bookers keep up the pace

Since Tamedia began four years ago to reward media agencies that book directly with Tamedia titles instead of via Publicitas, so-called direct booking compensation (DBE) has become established in the industry. More and more independent publishers joined Tamedia - although these offers were structured differently. A Werbewoche survey now makes it clear: all previous offers remain unchanged this year. The only change: from this year, the free newspaper .ch will also reward its direct booking customers - with a percentage that varies according to volume.
It is still unclear what Weltwoche is doing. "I don't want to comment on this discussion," said publishing director Maike Juchler once again. And the Freiburger Nachrichten also once again avoided giving an answer.
Of the publishers with Publicitas management, NZZ is still the only one that does not grant a DBE, but rather a handling fee (HE) accepted by P. P and NZZ do this so that the NZZ titles are not at a disadvantage compared to the self-directed titles with DBE. The NZZ HE will continue to be one percent and will be paid to customers and agencies whose annual BK/JUP-eligible commercial advertising and insert sales with NZZ titles amount to at least CHF 500,000. It applies to bookings in NZZ, NZZ am Sonntag, Magazin Z, NZZ Campus, Bücher am Sonntag and now also NZZ Chronik, but not to bookings in NZZ Folio and NZZ Online.
The other P-directed publishers, St. Galler Tagblatt, LZ Medien, the publishers of Mittelland-Zeitung and Zürcher Land-Zeitung, the three regional newspapers in Ticino and the Edipresse newspapers, have not yet followed NZZ. However, this could change here and there this year (see box). And in Chur, where the Südostschweiz titles are marketed "in part" by the company itself, the DBE is in any case at the ready. "At Südostschweiz, the generally applicable rates and discounts apply. However, we are keeping a very close eye on developments in the DBE or HE sector," says Susanne Lebrument, Managing Director of SO-Publicitas.
The situation is different in the online sector: Tamedia, which has paid a different DBE for self-marketed websites since 2006, has now standardized this to 15 percent as of 2009 - without a fixed minimum volume. .ch, on the other hand, explicitly treats online customers in the same way as print customers. And Axel Springer Switzerland has "individual solutions for selected customers with large volumes" in the online sector. Other publishers have not yet committed to any such offers.
It is clear that Publicitas is generally not happy about the DBE. Robert Schmidli, CEO of Publicitas, therefore used his appearance at the Dreikönigstagung (Epiphany Conference) to speak into the consciences of in-house publishers. The publishers under fire reacted calmly. "The DBE rewards the additional services provided by the media agencies, so it has no influence whatsoever on any discounting of advertising services," contradicts Tamedia spokesperson Christoph Zimmer. Ringier is also of the opinion that "the DBE has no significant influence on the actual pricing". And even Bruno Hegglin, who was still a member of the Publicitas management board a year ago and is now Head of Advertising Market at Neue Luzerner Zeitung, backs the independent publishers: "In our view, DBE/HE have neither contributed to nor reinforced this development."

Markus Knöpfli

> To the table: Conditions for direct bookers 2009

Several P leases are under discussion
It is possible that the circle of owner-operated publishers and thus DBE providers will soon expand, as at least three large publishers with full Publicitas leases are in the process of restructuring their relationship with P. Edipresse will probably announce as early as February whether it will keep its newspapers under P lease or whether they - like the magazines - will switch to in-house management. The relationship with P is also under review at the entire NZZ Group. The same applies to AZ Medien, which has terminated its contract for Mittelland-Zeitung and Sonntag with P at the end of 2009 as a precautionary measure, as confirmed by spokeswoman Eva Keller. However, since January 1, the regional market development of Aargauer Zeitung (AZ) has once again been handled exclusively by P. The Aargauer Medienhaus scaled back the activities of its Media Factory company in the regional advertising market at the end of last year. Previously, it had acquired ads for AZ in parallel with P. (mk)