Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries 
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Sanoma’s vision of the future
For 2011, Sanoma expects an increase in the use of smartphones, especially when people 
travel from home to work or school. The company expects that the iPad will be used more 
intensively at home, especially because the iPad is suitable for reading long articles with 
video’s and photos (Starkenburg J. , 2010). 
Sanoma does not expect that the new, digital forms of publishing will completely replace 
print activities. In 2012, Sanoma intends to gain 70% of their revenues from the internet 
(Molman, 2011). 
Sanoma’s vision on media consumption is that it becomes more and more a social experience. 
The combination of social networks, digital media and mobility, in Sanoma’s vision, enables 
consumers to share their views and opinions in various ways and media (Sanoma, 2010). In 
response to this trend Sanoma tries to engage users in the media content production.
After previous unsuccessful attempts to stimulate user created content (www.maakjezo, an 
initiative to use user content to publish online magazines), NU.nl and also many of the 
Finnish newspaper sites now exploit popular user generated content section (Adformatie, 
2007). Readers elaborate on printed news in online discussions and user photographs and 
opinions increasingly reach the professional online and printed editions (Sanoma, 2008). 
NU.nl 
An interesting example of a successful internet only news provider is the biggest Dutch news 
site NU.nl, bought by Sanoma in 2005. The website was launched in 1999 as the first online 
news publisher in the Netherlands that published news 24/7. The website is based on similar 
American news sites and contains mainly brief news reports bought from news agencies. In 
2010 NU.nl generated 68 million monthly page views. In 2011 NU.nl has even more visitors: 
four million unique monthly visitors. This is a large amount considering that The Netherlands 
has 16 million inhabitants. In comparison: the second biggest news website, the Telegraaf.nl 
(from the biggest printed newspaper with the same name) has a reach of 3,3 million unique 
monthly visitors (Multiscope, 2011).
A big success was the launch of the NU.nl app for the iPhone with 35 million page views 
each month at the end of 2010 (Villamedia, 2010). The mobile website had a reach of 25 
million page views per month (Ringelestijn, 2010). NU.nl’s goal for this app is to reach the 
same number of page views as the website (Starkenburg J., 2010). In 2011 the influence of 
social media grew; many page views on the website NU.nl are now the result of content that 
has been shared on Facebook, Hyves (a Dutch social networking site) and Twitter 
(Starkenburg J. , 2011a). 
NU.nl has a special section for user generated news: NUjij.nl. This section receives a lot of 
contributions from Dutch expats who report and comment upon foreign news in the country 
where they live. The section is moderated. The news published in the user generated news 
section increasingly becomes a source for the professional part of the website: ten of sixty 
news articles on NUJij.nl in the first two months of 2011 became front page articles. 
In March 2011, NU.jij had 70- to 80 thousand unique visitors a day. These visitors wrote 
about five to six hundred articles. Also NUfoto (pictures) receives contributions from people 
who were witness to for instance a crime or accident and who uploaded there pictures. 
NUfoto sells those pictures to other parties. The revenues are shared between NU.nl and the 
photographer (Ramaer, 2011).

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