News International can buck downward trend with heavy print investment, says trading director

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News International will continue to 'invest heavily' in marketing its print products in an attempt to buck the current downward trend in newspaper revenues, its trading director said yesterday.

Speaking at the Westminster eForum on online advertising, Dominic Carter said the publisher was 'spending a lot of money in the absolute belief that we can go against the curve'.

Traditional newspapers will have 'a long future' if they maintain a high quality product and are successfully exploited as brands by publishers, he said.

"Healthy offline brands will turn into successful online parts of the business. It depends on the attitude that the newspaper publisher towards their online and offline brands: our view is that as a business we invest heavily in our offline brands and it will make our online brands more successful as well," said Carter.

The publisher, which has integrated print with online sales and marketing teams, is also investing in promoting all of its products across multimedia platforms and is expecting to see the benefits of this marketing push within the next 12 months, he added.

Fellow speaker Simon Waldman, Guardian Media Group's (GMG) director of digital strategy and development, said GMG has also integrated commercial operations under one commercial director.

In terms of offline versus online investment, Waldman said the group would invest where it thinks it will make 'the biggest impact'.

"The challenge is, once you integrate, how do you keep the digital spark?" he added.