Live from the WAN-IFRA Study Tour
By Nancy Lane, President, Local Media Association
From meeting with Anders Berglund, Sales Director, Aftonbladet (Stockholm, Sweden)
Fascinating visit with Sweden's largest media house. Headlines include:
- Mobile will represent $6 - $10 million Euro this year. It is "no longer a small business for us."
- A few years ago the transformation was from print to online; today it is online to mobile.
- Aftonbladet.se has 4 M UV; mobile site is 1.8 M UV. Some early mornings and late evenings they have more visitors to their mobile site than desktop.
- 2012 will be the first year that online revenue will surpass print for them ($50 million Euro in online; $45 M Euro in print).
- They concentrate on their mobile site as opposed to apps (they do have an app with 150,000 subscribers).
- Multi-channel sales get the best results for their clients. They do lead with digital (for example they love to host mobile workshops and then sell print to support it).
- Sales structure - they have separate online and print reps but it is now all coming together and very soon all sales reps will sell the full multi-channel media house.
- They use a "freemium" model online (150,000 subscribers that pay $3 Euro/month for customized content). They do NOT plan to further charge for content citing their large audience and large revenue stream.
Full report on all companies visited will be available in late May. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the week.