Presentation at the INMA seminar in Copenhagen "Re-creating Value in An Age of Abundance".

1. Finding new digital revenue streams, but how?
John Einar Sandvand jes@aftenposten.no Twitter: @johnei

2. Aftenposten’s product portfolio in brief
Morning edition Online and mobile
•!Subscription paper (>90% newspaper
subscription) •!No subscription
•!Published Mon. – Sun. •!1,1 million unique users
•!Ca. 240k circulation (2nd weekly
largest in Norway) •!4th largest online
•!Content newspaper in Norway
•!National & int’l news •!45k weekly mobile users
•!Arts & Leisure •!Newsletters
•!Editorials and MOBILE •!Content from the morning
commentaries edition + original content
•!Business (e.g., oslopuls)
Evening edition Supplementary
•!Subscription paper publications, e.g.,
(bundled with Morning) •!‘A-magasinet’ included
•!Published Tue.. – Thu. weekly w/ morning edition
•!Ca. 110k circulation (3rd •!Various specials (e.g.,
largest in Norway) Executive Education)
•!Content •!Niche websites (e.g., E24,
•!News/feature/utility Norway’s largest business
for readers living in site)
Greater Oslo area •!Commercial inserts
•!Eight super-local editions •!Magazines (e.g., Innsikt)
(for neighborhoods within
Oslo) distributed to all
3 households in Oslo
weekly

3. Norway: 7 national news sites
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*
*
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*
Weekly unique visitors – week 50, 2009

4. Aftenposten.no
•!User profile:
Higher
education,
higher income
•!Most of the
content from
newspaper +
original content
•!Separate
sites for travel
and Oslo guide

5. What to do?

6. 2008
Minus
3 million
euros
Revenues: About
9 million

7. 2009
Minus
3 million
euros

8. Three step strategy for new revenue streams
Classified User
Display ads
ads payment

9. Developing more revenue streams
Ad-revenue ap.no
Mill. kroner

10. 1. Making our ad products work better
Classified User
Display ads
ads payment

11. Developing premium ad formats

12. Premium formats: The T ad

13. Premium formats: Info sections

14. Premium: Behavioral targeting

15. 2. Classified ads as new revenue stream
Classified User
Display ads
ads payment

16. Finn.no: Online classified success

17. There is an attractive No. 2 position
Active job seekers Passive job seekers

18. Using business news to attract
passive job seekers
Search in job listings
Upselling good
positions
Special deals with
recruitment
companies

19. Adding context with job section

20. Same technique used with property

21. Coming up: Cars
and public
announcements

22. 3. Develop user-paid services
Classified User
Display ads
ads payment

23. But how to do it?

24. Embarrasing discovery 1
We were very bad at selling our products online
•!Near impossible to discover the products
•!Cumbersome buying process
•!Hard to find the products after you buy them
•!No efficient and simple payment system
•!Different login systems not coordinated
•!Very hard to put new products up for sale
•!Improvement projects not coordinated

25. First step: Build a customer frontend
New project: Online Sales and Service
•!Involves editorial, ads, subscription, IT,
business development
•!Goal: Build a completely new frontend for
all sales and customer relationships
•!High emphasis on simple interaction and
user friendliness
•!Easy to add new products
•!First version will be launched in May

26. Users will only pay for Unique Value
Creating Unique Value
?
?
?
?
?

27. Unique
Content
•!Content you don’t think
you can find anywhere
else
•!Local, niche, experts,
etc

28. Unique
Convenience
•!Access in
specific
situations or
areas
•!Extremely
easy to use
•!Flexibility

29. Unique Usefullness
•!Content and services you •!How to’s, guides, weight
can use to reach personal club, apps, tools, tests of
goals products, etc

30. Unique
Packaging
•!Premium presentation
and design
•!Selection of content, for
instance personalization
or for niches

31. Unique Experience
•!Gives an emotional •!Brand value, community,
attachment, entertainment, entertainment, unique user
social connections, etc. experience …

32. Creating Unique Value
Unique
Convenience
Unique
Content
Unique
Usefullness
Unique
Packaging
Unique
Experience

33. Unique Value for main products
Newspaper Unique Unique Unique Unique Unique
content Convenience Usefullness Packaging Experience
1980s Strong Strong Strong Strong Strong
Today Medium Strong Medium Medium Medium
Web site Unique Unique Unique Unique Unique
content Convenience Usefullness Packaging Experience
Today Low Medium Medium/low Low Low

34. Exploring three directions
Repackage Special Mobile
old and/or services services and
make new and/or clubs apps
core content

35. Some premises in our work
•!Must find products which serve the needs of our most
loyal users
•!General paywall for web site carries too big risks – at
least for now
•!Looking for products where some users pay for some
content/services
•!Digital products should build on and strengthen core
values of the Aftenposten brand
•!Only experiments will teach us what will work or not

36. Repackage old or make new content
Repackage Special Mobile
old and/or services services and
make new and/or clubs apps
core content

37. Projects for repackaging content
•!Revitalizing the e-paper
•!Digital archives
•!New digital versions of Aftenposten
•!Niche products

38. Re-vitalizing the e-paper
•!New and
more user-
fiendly solution
•!Make it
easier to buy
•!Market
campaigns

39. Digital archives as paid service
•!150 years of history – and a unique position as
Norway’s newspaper of record
•!1,7 million newspaper pages

40. User-friendly solution

41. Business model
•!Single day access
or subscription
•!Special campaigns
for newspaper
subscribers
•!Considering
bundling with e-
paper
•!Launch in
connection with 150
year anniversary in
May

42. New digital versions of Aftenposten
E- Tablets? Adobe Pay level
readers? Air? on site?
Our goal is to make paid digital versions of Aftenposten
offering premium quality and reader experience

43. Two very different e-reader roads
Based on e-ink Tablets
•!Kindle, Sony •!iPad
•!Primarily book reading •!Primarily multimedia
tool. Excellent for text tool. Excellent for web
and battery life browsing, video, apps,
•!No color/interactivity yet gaming, tools.
•!Limited web browsing •!Full web access
•!Cheap devices •!Higher prices
•!Most content paid •!Lots of free content

44. Strong growth estimated

45. Content will be consumed
on many platforms
… and users will expect seamless transfer

46. Analyzing user situations
How do we serve users’ needs in
specific situations during the day?

47. How to produce?
Copiers
Social media iPad
Net TV
Tablets
Unknown
Print and web digital
channels
Unknown
print
channels
Net books
API/Widgets Mobile E-readers

48. Embarrasing discovery 2
We had very little control
of our information
structure
•!Not able to get a good
XML-feed out of our CMS
•!Editorial staff cheated on
meta data to achieve design
goals
•!Information structure
mainly defined for print
•!Big trouble in delivering
XML-feed consistently

49. A cultural challenge
How to become a multi-product company?
•!A big mental shift in the organization
•!Putting the content, not one end-product, in the
center
•!Content without metadata has no value
•!Challenges of organizing the work flow
•!Creating a culture of experiments

50. Special services and/or clubs
Repackage Special Mobile
old and/or services services and
make new and/or clubs apps
core content

51. Ordspill.no – online scrabble game
•!Free service
today
•!Extremely
loyal users
•!Very long
user sessions
•!72 % of users
under 40 years

52. Finding the good ideas

53. Mobile services and apps
Repackage Special Mobile
old and/or services services and
make new and/or clubs apps
core content

54. Apps
Hva skjer? I nærheten Inspirasjon
Søk

55. Appendix: An extra story of reusing content

56. Summing up 1
Classified User
Display ads
ads payment

57. Summing up 2
Creating Unique Value
Unique
Convenience
Unique
Content
Unique
Usefullness
Unique
Packaging
Unique
Experience

58. Summing up 3
Repackage Special Mobile
old and/or services services and
make new and/or clubs apps
core content

60. Thank you!
John Einar Sandvand
Mail: jes@aftenposten
Twitter: @johnei
Blog: BetaTales.com