Summary

The cruel paradox of emerging media is to find avenues to pay for them while throngs of audience members adopt them. The past decade has been punctuated by the development and steady, steep growth of online and wireless media. Meanwhile, media companies face the colossal hurdle of having to pay for the development and produce incremental revenues from advertising and marketing strategies. The turn of the 21st Century will be seen in history as the time when these new media were proving themselves worthy revenue producers alongside traditional media that are money-making machines, such as television, newspapers and radio. Adplexing is an Ifra initiative whose aim is to illuminate the path to fiscal success for media companies worldwide through new strategies and twists on old strategies. This Ifra Special Report and the accompanying web site, www.adplexing.org, provide research and case studies of best practices in revenue-making in these developing media. Readers of this Special Report, and visitors to Adplexing. org, will be given independent accounts of best practices, research, industry leader profiles, and can keep track of market trends by following the Adplexpert’s blog and the Adplexing Trend Report e-mail newsletter. A large portion of the web site is devoted to crossmedia advertising case studies and best practices, as crossmedia advertising is becoming one of the most promising and fast-growing revenue sources for media companies circa 2004. The pioneers in the cross-media advertising space are making millions of dollars of incremental revenue per year, and the strategy often represents the fastest growing area of revenue for the media companies. There are three key media stakeholders in the crossmedia advertising equation: consumers, advertisers and media companies – and each gain significant value from engaging in cross-media advertising. > The audience wins because they get relevant messages tailored to them on the media and during the time they prefer. These consumers are multitasking more than one media at a time, and consume multiple media across the space of a day. The advertisers win because they get fewer sales calls, one bill for all media, and most importantly, more effectiveness for their advertising investment across media. > The media companies win because they get more incremental revenues with this new winning strategy. Some pioneers are claiming that cross-media advertising represents 1 percent to 5 percent of the media companies’ total revenues, and often is the fastest growing segment of their revenue-making. Revenue-making ideas will continue to be added on the accompanying web site, in order to provide fresh, up-to-date, relevant ideas to improve the bottom line for media companies. Topics include cross-media advertising, online advertising, rich media, syndication, paid content, migration and cross-media integration of classifieds, e-mail marketing, registration, subscriptions, wireless and other strategies. Whether we hear from you in person or see you online, we wish you successful Adplexing!