HK news industry group launches ad platform to boost media revenue
Hong Kong’s biggest newspaper industry group on Wednesday launched a new advertising platform that aims to boost revenue at legitimate local news outlets and ensure advertisers that their campaigns won’t appear on shady websites.
News Network Advertising Company, an initiative of the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong, is cooperating with 11 local news organizations, including China Daily Hong Kong, said Newspaper Society Chairman Keith Kam Woon-ting. Other local media might be included in the future.
The platform seeks to become Hong Kong’s most-viewed news advertising platform with the highest traffic and most extensive news coverage in the local newspaper industry, Kam said. The 11 participating newspapers, all of which are Newspaper Society members, comprise Chinese- and English-language news, and paid and free newspapers.
News Network will place client ads on the websites and mobile applications of the 11 papers, thus ensuring content quality and providing a credible, high-quality market environment for the community and the advertising companies, Kam said. The idea is to address the concerns of customers that their advertisements are being placed next to fake news or dubious content that could harm society and damage the company’s image, said Kam, who is also chief operating officer of Ming Pao Holdings.
He projected that News Network will make full use of the combined influence of major local media outlets and play a huge role in promoting events in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, especially through online platforms like websites and mobile applications, which have attracted an increasingly large number of users in recent years.
Kam said advertisers can achieve scale with News Network. For example, an advertiser with a target audience of 2 million individual views has a better chance of achieving that goal with the combined promotional power of a number of excellent media outlets than through a single website, he said.
The new platform’s operation is similar to that of social media trafficbased advertising platforms, said Kam. Advertisers can choose specific news websites on which their ads will appear, or let them be selected by the platform according to different criteria. The platform will provide data such as the number of page views. The platform will cooperate with advertising companies to place ads on a commission-sharing basis.
At the same time, the Society hopes that the platform will make a reasonable profit for local newspapers, Kam said.
Lo Wing-hung, a spokesman for the Newspaper Society of Hong Kong, noted that local newspapers were facing an operational crisis due to a continued decline in advertising revenue. One of the factors they have found was that some international ad companies monopolize the market and take 70 to 90 percent of the advertising revenue, leaving only 10 to 30 percent to the media.
Lo, executive director of Sing Tao News, said that the platform will take a maximum 30 percent commission on sales.
Lo said they have received a good response from the special administrative region government, commercial companies and the advertising industry since the platform was proposed.
Newspaper Society of Hong Kong President Lee Cho-jat said the group has been dedicated to promoting the industry’s professional standards over the years. He said he hopes the new platform will help traditional newspapers keep pace in the internet era and provide more pertinent services to stakeholders.
The 11 participating newspapers are AM730, Bastille Post, China Daily Hong Kong Edition, Ta Kung Pao, Headline Daily, Hong Kong Commercial Daily, Hong Kong Economic Journal, Ming Pao, Sing Tao Daily, The Standard, and Wen Wei Po.