DN+ Attracting Advertisers

When Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter launched its iPad app DN+ in late 2010, it was an immediate critical hit. But advertisers were few and far between. "We had a much-appreciated and beautiful product with DN+, but altogether too few advertisers," says Kristofer Dalin, project manager at the Bonnier-owned Dagens Nyheter. "So we set up a goal of reaching all the creative directors of Sweden's advertising agencies with an analog tablet computer." Along with the analog tablet came a special offer for training, software, advertising space as well as an evaluation by a panel in advertising industry daily Resumé and an iPad2. "Everything needed to create an ad on a tablet, in other words," says Dalin.

What Dagens Nyheter wanted to get across was the advantage of advertising on tablets: all the possibilities that digital content provides combined with the format that a tablet provides. "For example, you can have a film to let readers know more about a product without taking up space, or get readers engaged with a game, and then they can actually make a purchase directly in the ad," says Nils Öhman, one of the original designers of DN+. "Just as interesting is that readers, according to our research, like ads on tablets. Their attitudes are more similar to those towards ads in printed magazines than web ads. This could be because the ads are bigger than those on the web and it's easier to make them attractive visually. And it's easier for those not interested to just skip them."

A total of 15 agencies ended up taking Dagens Nyheter up on the offer as of the end of January 2012. "Some agencies even organized their own internal workshops," says Dalin. "One agency had 25 different ideas, with four of them becoming actual ads and two of these getting international attention."

To finish up the project and spread the word, Dagens Nyheter organized a workshop run by Resumé with Clae de Faire, Resumé editor-in-chief as moderator. Some 100 participants came to find out more about ads on DN+ and publishing on tablets. "We are extremely pleased with the results and how step-by-step we increased advertisers' interest in DN+," says Dalin. "And to strengthen the DN brand even more doesn't hurt either!"