New campaign highlights benefits of news media for advertisers as SMI numbers show double-digit growth in metropolitan newspaper spend

NewsMediaWorks – with the support of foundation partners News Corp Australia, Fairfax Media and Seven West Media – has launched a trade advertising campaign today to highlight the unmatchable trust in brands that can be created through advertising in a trusted news environment.

The press campaign targets advertisers, large and small, in private and government enterprise, and the ad agencies that advise them on strategy and media planning. It will be carried through national and metropolitan mastheads – in print and digital – that Australians trust to inform them on news and events critical to their lives.

NewsMediaWorks chairman and News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller said Australia’s major news media publishers were strongly aligned in their support of this important campaign.

“It creatively asserts the importance and value of trusted journalism and authentic storytelling – which lies at the heart of our great news brands – to advertisers,” he said.

The campaign has been designed and executed by independent agency Thinkerbell. Co-founder and consumer psychologist Adam Ferrier said the concept grew from research that underlined the superior level of trust in news brands because of its journalism.

“Branded messages will appear within context that has been fact checked, proofed, and considered.  We wanted to ensure advertisers understood that and how important that is for brands,” he said.

NewsMediaWorks CEO Peter Miller said the campaign revolved around a simple premise – trusted content and the halo effect that created.

“They say the company you keep defines you. So, if you surround yourself with the truth, you in turn will be trusted. Australia’s most trusted news media provides the ideal place for brands to be seen and believed. The truth builds trust.

“Journalism is what draws readers to our trusted news brands. Close to 14 million every month. It is this environment of trust in the news content that defines our news brands and, in so doing, produces tremendous opportunities for advertisers.”

The net ADTRUST scores (graphed above clearly demonstrate the relationship between trusted content and trusted advertising. News media performed the best of all measured mediums across both years. Moreover, the results reveal that the already high trust in content and advertising in news media rose sharply in the middle of 2018. 

The second wave of the ADTRUST study was conducted in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica revelations. The study reaffirmed that newspapers are most trusted of all media, and that digital news media is the most trusted of all digital media.

Conversely, social media performed particularly poorly in 2018, when the study was repeated, with trust in content and advertising decreasing significantly.

The NewsMediaWorks campaign launches at a time when there is substantial uplift in agency bookings in print media. The most recent (August) SMI media expenditure numbers show double digit growth in metropolitan newspaper spend and growth for newspapers overall as a media segment.

Bookings for print grew 2.7 per cent year-on-year, attributed to the 11.1 per cent increase in agency spending to metro titles. Regional papers also experienced growth, according to the latest figures.

This renewed confidence and trust in highly-accountable news media has been well earned and comes as advertisers and their agencies are putting a sharp focus on the limitations of digital only micro-targeting.

This campaign is designed to excite further advertiser interest in the unique value proposition of newspapers and digital news media.