I recently read in the blog of the ex-IT Manager of Anuntis Segundamano (the Spanish operation of Schibsted Classified Media) that – as of November 2008 – all print publications of the company in Spain are closing.
They are leaders in the Spanish online market in Jobs (Infojobs and Laboris), General Merchandise (Segundamano), Real Estate (Fotocasa) and Automotive (Coches.net). Segundamano newspaper in Spain has been for 30 years a kind of transactional ‘institution’ for used goods. I think in Madrid almost 100% of the population over 30 knows it as the ‘free ads paper’ and has used it at some point or another to sell a house, get a job or find a car.
By now print was an irrelevant part of the company’s profit (they were issuing only 14 print titles now, versus +160 in summer of 2004). However, they had managed to keep the overall growth by aggressive online positions and pricing and closures of loss-making and non-strategic print titles. According to Juan Carlos’s blog, the flagship title “was not loss making at this time”, but the strategic decision was to close and re-structure accordingly.
Schibsted revealed in it’s interim report of Q3 2008 that Schibsted Classified Media had Q3 operating revenues of EUR 38,4M – 19% less than in Q3 2007. According to the report, “the decline is primarily due to the negative trend of the print publications in Spain”. Operating revenues from online grew 13% to EUR 27,5M in the same period. Online contributed 72% of operating revenues vs 52% in the previous period. Internet made an operating profit of EUR 8,4M vs an operating loss of EUR 1,2M for print.
Classifieds in print are, indeed, on a sliding scale. The general trend in media, according to enduragement’s interesting post, is another relevant signal.
Tags: advertising, Anuntis Segundamano, classified ads, Eero Korhonen, jakob nielsen, Juan Carlos del Olmo, main stream media, print ads, profit & loss, Schibsted Classified Media
November 12, 2008 at 10:46 am
[...] classified business in Spain An update is needed to my post couple days ago. Based on Clarification, I wrote on Sunday that Schibsted closes its classified flagship paper Segundamano in Spain. She [...]