A Q&A with Craig Desens Chief Development Officer of Newspaper Services of America.
Portada: Can you please describe the specifics of the NSA – Papel Media alliance?
Craig Desens: It is an opportunity to bring value to our clients and help our clients to understand the Hispanic market better. At the same time, Papel deals with many agencies and is sometimes asked to deliver recommendations in the general market and NSA Media can help with that.
Portada: Is this an exclusive alliance? Is Papel Media the only Hispanic print media firm you will be working when placing into Hispanic newspapers?
Desens: No. The alliance is non-exclusive. Newspaper Services of America will still will be dealing with Hispanic newspapers directly.
Portada: What has been the volume of your Hispanic print media buys in 2007 and 2006?
Desens: About 1% of NSA’s total annual buy, which is 1.6$ billion. The Hispanic business has been growing at a 40% annual rate over the last two years years. So it is growing as a percentage of overall business.
Portada: As a result of the Papel Media alliance, how much do you see that investment growing?
Desens: We think that there is an opportunity for clients to look more in-depth into the Hispanic print market.
Portada: How much of your Hispanic print advertising goes into direct mail (% wise)?
Desens: We don’t know that number. However, we do direct mail. The great majority of our business is in FSIs.
Portada: I understand that more than half of the general market print advertising volume goes into FSIs, in Hispanic that proportion is lower. What are the main challenges and opportunities for Hispanic FSI placement?
Desens: The two main challenges we face are that most of our advertisers want to be in Sunday newspaper through pre-print and the ability to target, not necessarily through full run.
Portada: Does Newspaper Services of America plan to expand into Internet advertising?
Desens: We have a relationship with Centro, a company that places ads on media websites, primarily newspaper websites, our clients that might be interested in placing ads on newspaper websites. We work with them. If there are Hispanic newspapers that have websites, Centro will have those in their database.
Portada: What accounts does NSA Media buy Hispanic print for?
Sears, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Home Depot. Those are the companies that spend the highest dollar amount. We also recently got the Wal-Mart newspaper business.
Related Articles:
Nov., 2007: Sears, News America, Home Depot lead the Hispanic FSI Market by number of insertions
Oct., 2007: ROP Advertising Losing Ground to Preprints (FSI’s)