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Record digital revenues for Norwegian newspaper giant

Posted: 09/05/08 By: Kristine Lowe

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Norwegian media company Schibsted today reported that 61 per cent of its operating revenues now comes from its network of websites.

At the end of 2007, analysts predicted that digital revenues for Schibsted, which owns newspapers all over Europe, would rise to 60 per cent during 2008.

Today's first quarter results reveal that the newspaper publisher has met this target already.

The company earned 51 per cent of its revenue from its online activities in 2007. Its latest set of financial figures show the company now earns 61 per cent from its market leading news and classifieds sites. The year-on-year increase in digital revenues from first quarter 2007, was 29 per cent.

"Many of the newspaper operations in the US spent their time and energy trying to preserve print at all costs, and online was just a throw-in. Schibsted has focused on both, but decided at a very early stage that if print was going to be cannibalised, Schibsted would be the cannibal," said Peter M Zollman, founding principal and executive editor of global consulting company Classified Intelligence, in a report by the Newspaper Association of America in December 2007.

Schibsted is often cited as a global example of a successful online transition, but its success is hard to emulate in markets such as the US, where the media landscape is much more fragmented and sites like Ebay and Craigslist have a stronghold on the classifieds market.

Another factor in Schibsted's online profitability is its willingness to cannibalise its own products. Executives and editors talk candidly about how the company's online success is slowly eroding its print audience.

During the Nordic Media Days conference in Bergen, a panelist called Torry Pedersen, editor-in-chief of Schibsted-owned VG.no (the most-read newspaper and news site in Norway) a funeral agent in his new additional capacity as managing director of VGs print edition.

Pedersen, though, wasn't offended.

"This is probably not such a bad thing because funeral agencies have the best business model there is; they never become redundant," he said in reply.

"If we get to a stage where we cannot become redundant, we have done a good job."

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