NS pledges £3m regional press project
The Newspaper Society (NS) has pledged to address seven key areas of concern raised by marketers and advertising agencies in an effort to increase the regional press’ share of national advertising spend.
Production, planning, buying, cost, administration, product information and marketing have all been identified as issues that need to be addressed, following an industry-wide consultation which formed part of a £3m marketing campaign.
NS members have agreed to allocate a further £3m for the campaign to run into a second year and to publicise the new initiatives throughout the industry.
Chris Stanley, marketing director of the NS, says: “Never before have we had such a clear mandate from our customers, and such strong and enthusiastic commitment from publishers to deliver solutions.”
The NS is to use Web-based technology to set up a digital delivery system that will allow advertisers to send artwork to newspapers faster, more reliably and at a lower cost. A Web-based service will be developed with planning systems and data sources. An electronic voucher delivery system will be set up as a Web-based service to help buyers place booking schedules with sales operations, thereby cutting costs.
The NS will also set up a reproduction standards group to investigate and address reproduction quality.
More than £100,000 will be spent on advertising effectiveness research to provide planners with data on how to maximise return on investment, says the NS.
