More large advertisements again
Digital transmission Three years after the last rate reduction, PrintOnline can again reduce the prices for transmitted advertisements.
Digital transmission Three years after the last rate reduction, PrintOnline is once again able to reduce the prices for transmitted advertisements.advertisers who want to book an advertisement in print titles and send it to the individual publishers are increasingly using PrintOnline (POL) to handle the transmission. According to its homepage, POL sees itself as a "hub" between customers, graphic designers, lithographers and agencies on the one hand and publishers or printers on the other. For every advertisement that reaches a publisher via POL, the latter pays a fee: large publishers pay an annual connection fee of CHF 15,000 and CHF 10 per advertisement. Smaller publishers can waive a connection fee, but pay CHF 30 per advertisement. If the advertisements are smaller than 311 square centimetres (half a tabloid page), large publishers pay CHF 6 and small publishers CHF 18. In either case, a fee of 2 francs per megabyte transmitted is added.
POL will reduce this data volume-dependent charge to one franc in 2007. This is the first time the company has reduced its tariff since 2003, albeit only minimally. This is possible because POL was able to reduce its operating budget by around 200,000 francs through a series of optimization measures in the high-performance network and storage area, as Managing Director Kurt Obrist explains.
POL was founded in 1998 by Publicitas, Ringier, Tamedia and NZZ as a non-profit company to provide an industry solution and to make it easier for advertising clients to handle print advertising.
POL therefore passes on any surpluses to the publishers in the form of rate reductions. However, due to the advertising slump, POL's turnover stagnated, even last year. Although the number of advertisements transmitted online each year increased steadily (exception: 2002), the fact that these tended to be smaller for reasons of economy meant that POL income grew less strongly than the volume. The year 2005 makes this particularly clear: POL forwarded 12,3836 advertisements at that time, 7.6 percent more than in the previous year, but small advertisements accounted for more than half of the total volume at 55 percent.
More volumeLast year, POL felt the effects of two other trends: firstly, the volume of advertising in magazines and newspapers picked up again, and even commercial advertisements were up slightly, which is why POL was able to increase its volume again by 2.7 percent to 125,841 advertisements. In view of the booming job advertisements, however, it may come as a surprise that POL was not able to increase more strongly.
However, the second trend is becoming noticeable with classified ads: These advertisements are increasingly being placed and transmitted via Publiconnect, Scout24, Unio or Prospective, the specialized providers for online and print classifieds markets - bypassing POL. The result: for the first time, POL was no longer able to increase its share of small ads, but only just maintained it at 54 percent - which corresponds to a loss of market share in a booming segment. However, Obrist is neither surprised by this nor does he want to talk about a loss. "We are in the process of returning to our traditional area, commercial advertising, and have been able to make gains here again, particularly with national campaigns," he states.
For 2007, Obrist has set itself the goal of further minimizing the manual effort involved in the entire advertising workflow. For this reason, the POL interfaces to both the prepress companies and the publishers are to be connected and automated. Obrist intends to approach such companies more frequently this year.
He has the same goal with the Australian company Quickcut, through whose German subsidiary 20 to 30 foreign advertising customers manage their advertisements in Swiss and other European print titles. "We also still have a manual interface with Quickcut, which we want to automate," says Obrist. This will make it easier for foreign customers to advertise in Switzerland. And vice versa: POL and Quickcut should also make it easier for Swiss companies to advertise in foreign print media.
POLAS decommissionedThree years ago, POL
with the POLAS (PrintOnline Advertisement System) service, for which a separate company was even founded. However, this company has now ceased its activities, says Kurt Obrist. The reason: so far, not a single customer has been found who wanted to use the remote publishing service. Advertisers, such as car importers, who need to adapt their advertisements regionally, for example, should be able to save a basic advertisement with their own CI in the POL system so that authorized garage owners can access it, insert their individual text, choose a different image if necessary and then place a booking order for the regional newspaper. Obrist does not know exactly why the offer was not well received. "However, I believe that remote publishing will become important in the future, which is why we are sticking to our guns with POLAS," he says. Markus Knöpfli
POL will reduce this data volume-dependent charge to one franc in 2007. This is the first time the company has reduced its tariff since 2003, albeit only minimally. This is possible because POL was able to reduce its operating budget by around 200,000 francs through a series of optimization measures in the high-performance network and storage area, as Managing Director Kurt Obrist explains.
POL was founded in 1998 by Publicitas, Ringier, Tamedia and NZZ as a non-profit company to provide an industry solution and to make it easier for advertising clients to handle print advertising.
POL therefore passes on any surpluses to the publishers in the form of rate reductions. However, due to the advertising slump, POL's turnover stagnated, even last year. Although the number of advertisements transmitted online each year increased steadily (exception: 2002), the fact that these tended to be smaller for reasons of economy meant that POL income grew less strongly than the volume. The year 2005 makes this particularly clear: POL forwarded 12,3836 advertisements at that time, 7.6 percent more than in the previous year, but small advertisements accounted for more than half of the total volume at 55 percent.
More volumeLast year, POL felt the effects of two other trends: firstly, the volume of advertising in magazines and newspapers picked up again, and even commercial advertisements were up slightly, which is why POL was able to increase its volume again by 2.7 percent to 125,841 advertisements. In view of the booming job advertisements, however, it may come as a surprise that POL was not able to increase more strongly.
However, the second trend is becoming noticeable with classified ads: These advertisements are increasingly being placed and transmitted via Publiconnect, Scout24, Unio or Prospective, the specialized providers for online and print classifieds markets - bypassing POL. The result: for the first time, POL was no longer able to increase its share of small ads, but only just maintained it at 54 percent - which corresponds to a loss of market share in a booming segment. However, Obrist is neither surprised by this nor does he want to talk about a loss. "We are in the process of returning to our traditional area, commercial advertising, and have been able to make gains here again, particularly with national campaigns," he states.
For 2007, Obrist has set itself the goal of further minimizing the manual effort involved in the entire advertising workflow. For this reason, the POL interfaces to both the prepress companies and the publishers are to be connected and automated. Obrist intends to approach such companies more frequently this year.
He has the same goal with the Australian company Quickcut, through whose German subsidiary 20 to 30 foreign advertising customers manage their advertisements in Swiss and other European print titles. "We also still have a manual interface with Quickcut, which we want to automate," says Obrist. This will make it easier for foreign customers to advertise in Switzerland. And vice versa: POL and Quickcut should also make it easier for Swiss companies to advertise in foreign print media.
POLAS decommissionedThree years ago, POL
with the POLAS (PrintOnline Advertisement System) service, for which a separate company was even founded. However, this company has now ceased its activities, says Kurt Obrist. The reason: so far, not a single customer has been found who wanted to use the remote publishing service. Advertisers, such as car importers, who need to adapt their advertisements regionally, for example, should be able to save a basic advertisement with their own CI in the POL system so that authorized garage owners can access it, insert their individual text, choose a different image if necessary and then place a booking order for the regional newspaper. Obrist does not know exactly why the offer was not well received. "However, I believe that remote publishing will become important in the future, which is why we are sticking to our guns with POLAS," he says. Markus Knöpfli
