Paru Vendu to focus on Internet growth
French publisher Group Hersant Media (GMH) yesterday unveiled an Internet-focused strategy to save its classifieds branch Comareg / Paru Vendu, which was recently placed under bankruptcy protection.
The company said it hopes to increase its online revenue this year by 250 percent over 2010 revenue, from 18 million euros to 45 million euros, and it plans to invest 5 million euros to help it reach that goal. From now on, individuals who want to post a classified will have it for free on the company’s websites, although the company will offer optional upsells for photos, premium placement and similar promotions. The Web will be the first medium of publication, even for those who want their classified in print. (Some of the company’s current revenue for print is display ads.)
The group will stop publishing 22 local print editions, out of 223, of its weekly Paru Vendu, which home-delivers 9 millions copies per week. The company will also close its 240 offices and eliminate 30 percent of its 2,500 employees, eliminating 758 persons. And the Paru Vendu website will be revamped to allow individuals to place their own ads.
“We want to become a strong cross platform in local media in the area of automotive, real estate and job classifieds,” said GHM general manager Dominique Bernard.
The plan is still subject to court approval under French bankruptcy law.
Paru Vendu reported revenue of 236 million euros in 2010, down roughly 14 percent from 275 million euros in 2009. According to GHM, roughly 80 million euros are generated by real estate advertising and 60 million in the automotive area.
By comparison, the other remaining big French player in the print classifieds segment, Spir Communication, recently released its full results for 2010. The media branch for Spir had a total revenue of 222.5 million euros — down 9.2 percent from 2009%. Print weekly revenue was 149 million euros, down 23.1 percent, and Internet revenue was up 43 percent to 73.3 million. Its websites include Logic-immo.com (real estate), Topannonces.fr (general), lacentrale.fr and Caradisiac.com (automotive). Total turnover for the group, including its distribution activities, was 316.8 million euros, down 4.6 percent from the previous year.
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NY Daily News automates classified renewals via Five9
Five9, Inc., an on-demand call center software provider, just announced that New York Daily News has deployed its on-demand call center software, integrating it with Salesforce.com customer relationship management (CRM), to increase classified advertising renewals.
Click to call functionality, predictive dialer, advertiser record pop-ups and transparency of agent activity are all part of the Five9 improvements.
“Our classifieds agents were dialing manually before,” said Chris Thompson, Director of Advertising Administration and Financial Operations for New York Daily News, in the announcement. “Tracking renewals to properly credit our agents was next to impossible. With Five9, we have full tracking and management capabilities on all agent activity and all orders. We can now better manage our entire staff and properly credit each agent for the accounts they’ve earned, reducing agent churn. Our advertisers are also happier because we are better able to manage outbound renewal calls.”
When auto dealers catch cold, newspapers sneeze, says CNA
Consumers want interactive, on-demand and customizable experiences in their online automotive searches, yet newspapers aren’t delivering that well enough, according to the Canadian Newspaper Association.
The association, it seems, was actually more optimistic about the future of print than were the newspapers who presented at the Ink & Beyond national newspaper conference, according to the Toronto Star. The event’s Under the Hood presentation discussed newspapers’ dependency on automotive advertising.
Paul Anger and Jon Wolman, publishers of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News spoke about their Detroit Plan for the JOA, saying that print wasn’t important, journalism was. The good news in Detroit was that 96 percent of subscribers have been retained and the money saved in printing reductions have allowed the papers to evolve their digital offerings to auto and other advertisers.
The plan, begun in 2008, cut home delivery for both papers to Thursday, Friday and Sunday only, the biggest advertising days. The print publications still existed all seven days of the week, but in smaller express versions distributed by news racks. An e-edition is available online each day as well.
“Look at it this way,” said Anger. “At least in the States, the milk man doesn’t deliver fresh milk anymore. Doctors haven’t made housecalls for decades. But we still get milk, and we still get medicine. It all comes down to the journalism. It all comes down to the product.”
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