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Schibsted Sweden sees digital revenues surge

Anders Berglund, Vice President of Sales for Schibsted Media Group Sweden, discussed how his company is successfully navigating disruptive change during today’s Digital Media Round Table in Bangkok.

by Brian Veseling brian.veseling@wan-ifra.org | June 2, 2013

During the past decade, Schibsted Sweden has gone from having almost no digital revenues to more than 70 percent of total revenues coming from digital.

In opening the session, Stig Nordqvist, executive director of Publishing & Digital at WAN-IFRA, stressed that news publishers need to rethink their digital strategy before someone else does it for them. It is imperative for publishers to increase their focus on digital because both print advertising and circulation revenues are declining in mature markets, he said. Having a digital focus is the key to building business today, Nordqvist said, adding that leading publishers today are aiming to make digital revenues at least 50 percent of their business.

Schibsted Sweden has clearly made achieving this a priority and today, the company’s businesses reach nine out of 10 Swedes each week through its stable of products and services which include the daily newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet, about a dozen digital marketplace and services websites as well as two classifieds sites. These businesses provide a complete ecosystem that is enhanced by technology and provide one advertising and revenue data platform, Berglund said.

The revenue migration challenge is to understand the consumer and the customer/advertiser, he said.

As a publisher, the winners are going to be those who best match consumer preference and need to advertisers demands, Berglund added. One major demand is “to get access to our total data,” he said. Over the past few years, Schibsted has managed to do this by moving “from asking questions/surveys to digital foot prints, in real time.”

Berglund will be speaking again later this week about “Powerful cross-media campaigns with ‘second wave’ digital media” during Session 8 on Wednesday at the World Advertising Forum in Bangkok.

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