KS President Lombardi wants to gather media players at the round table

How the Switzerland at the weekend writes in its current issue, the umbrella organization for commercial communications is planning an offensive against the US advertising giants Facebook and Google, to which CHF 1.12 billion flowed in the Swiss online advertising market in 2017. The problem: While the Swiss players are at loggerheads, digital advertising money is flowing abroad.

If KS President Lombardi has his way, the Swiss players will meet at the round table, where the umbrella organization wants to mediate. The first challenge, according to Lombardi, is to start a dialogue again together. This refers to the market participants, some of whom have been in conflict with each other for many years: SRG, Ringier, Swisscom, their joint marketing organization Admeira, Tamedia with the marketer Goldbach, which will probably soon be part of the media group, as well as the Swiss Media Association, which has been bothered by the Admeira construct, or SRG's role in the joint venture, since the very beginning.

Lombardi, a member of the Council of States, is convinced that a "minimum consensus" is needed to maintain the balanced Swiss quality landscape. The publishers, the SRG, the agencies, the clients and the intermediaries would have to work together to find new ways to introduce targeted advertising. While the advertising revenues of the classic media are sinking, the growing online advertising is mostly not able to finance the editorial content, he said.

Common platform targeted

Lombardi envisions a solution such as a joint Swiss platform. On it, SRG could make some of its fee-financed content available to all other players. "The goal of such a platform could be to share content and to co-finance content via micropayment, subscriptions, fee shares and advertising," Lombardi told Schweiz am Wochenende. Accordingly, small players should also find space on such a platform.

KS Kommunikation Schweiz has made initial strategic considerations with its premium partner Emek, the Swiss Federal Media Commission. Media professor Otfried Jarren supports the idea of founding a platform for all Swiss media. According to Jarren, we are living in a "platform economy," platform offerings are becoming relevant and journalistic contributions are being disseminated via them. While corporate publishing is on the rise and even universities are working editorially and offering more information journalistically, media companies have not yet used platforms.

According to Schweiz am Wochenende, it is still unclear when the round table will take place. Three days after the No Billag initiative, the parliamentary group Media and Commercial Communication, which includes Lombardi, Matthias Aebischer and Natalie Rickli, will hold an information event. Topic: how to proceed? Later, Lombardi says, they will also seek dialog with international players such as Facebook and Google. (hae)

In the next Werbewoche 4/2018 on Friday, you can read, among other things, an interview with Filippo Lombardi. Werbewoche wanted to know from the Council of States how he sees the role of the industry umbrella organization in today's times of upheaval and what the Code of Conduct and the motion to simplify the Price Disclosure Ordinance (PBV), which KS/CS launched at the end of last year, are all about.