NewsBeat

8 NewsBeat February 2017 By GRETCHEN A. PECK Today's advertising sales teams are not taking "no" for an answer hat is it going to take for newspaper organizations to retain — if not grow — their advertising support, particularly in a competitive field with so many others vying for brands' ad spends? What does it take to reignite the allure of ad campaigns that creatively build upon the publishers' platforms — campaigns that leverage the strength of mobile, desktop, web and print? To better prepare for the New Year and the new relationships newspapers will have with advertisers, the industry requires a point of reference about what's challenging advertising revenues now. E&P asked advertising professionals (from ad reps to senior executives) about the greatest obstacles their ad teams are currently facing, the objections or reasons for reluctance from advertisers — across all the products and publications — and how they're winning back the hearts of advertisers and changing their minds. Conveying the Power of Print Logan Osterman According to Logan Osterman, advertising director for the Idaho Statesman in Boise, he and his team are accustomed to hearing plenty of objections from advertisers, mostly in relation to print advertising. W "They may say, 'We don't do print' or 'Print doesn't work for us anymore,' or 'Our audience doesn't read print.' If you look at objections, percentage wise, I'd say that's far and away the biggest challenge. As soon as you get a foot in the door, you're branded or labeled as 'the newspaper,'" Osterman said. His team isn't in the habit of "pushing" advertisers to buy into any program for which they're not comfortable, but the objection to print is often overcome by noting its reach and effectiveness. "If we think there's an opportunity for the advertiser to benefit from print, we usually go in with some market research. If there's an objection to a print campaign, we inform them that the audience is actually more than 130,000 people who read the newspaper every day — many, every single morning," Osterman said. "We may ask if that's surprising or if it's what they expected to hear. "Increasingly, our reps are leading with digital solutions, instead," he continued. "We're rebranding ourselves and showing that we can help our advertisers with a lot more than just print advertising." Natalia Wiita Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star advertising director Natalia Wiita thinks the reluctance expressed to her ad team probably mimics what other ad professionals around the industry hear as recurring themes. "I'd say the most common, usually, boil down to advertisers stating that people aren't reading the newspaper like they used to, that we are too expensive, or that they may not have the budget available," she said. Fortunately, Wiita said, the team has been able to dispel those worries. "When we hear, 'People aren't reading the newspaper like they used to,' I think it's important to address that, yes, our readers are now reading our content on a variety of platforms, which is only resulting in a larger audience for us and our advertisers." When advertisers challenge the publisher on rates, Wiita and the team are equipped to talk specifically about compelling numbers for cost per piece or cost per household, for example. Objections do vary depending on platform, Wiita noted. In the case of print, the reasons are often related to audience or cost, though Wiita said that "objections" may be too strong a word to describe these perfectly typical conversations. "With web or mobile buys, we may hear that ROI is too difficult to measure, or that the business doesn't have a website or landing page to drive readers to," she said. Lance Lewis Lance Lewis hears similar statements daily. He's an advertising sales executive with the Gettysburg Times in Pennsylvania. In his estimation, the most common concerns from advertisers are: "Newspaper circulation is decreasing; it's not a viable method of reaching the

• Cover