Tuesday 4 March 2008

Volkswagen has two unpleasant messages for publishers

The second day of the FIPP/VDZ publisher conference in Berlin started with a shock. Ralf Maltzen, director of internet marketing at Volkswagen, had two unpleasant messages for his media partners:

1. Volkswagen will start to shift ad budgets at least on the web more and more to performance based models. Only if portals contribute to a sufficient number of measured test drive requirements or direct consumer feedbacks they get fully paid.

2. Volkswagen will increase direct publishing activities on the web."On the digital kiosk our volkswagen portal is just one click away from the auto magazines." Maltzen showed his highly praised and much awarded Schlemmer blog campaign with German comedia Hape Kerkeling (now offline unfortunately). He made clear, that Volkswagen might no longer be dependent on the media to tell it's stories on the web.

I tried to imagine what Maltzen would argue if the publishers would counter his shift to performance based ad deals by emphasizing the impact of editorial coverage to automobil sales. Who brought the pictures of yesterday's VW Scirocco debut at the Geneva auto fair to the world public? Who is providing test drive reports to advise consumers in order to enable purchasing decisions. And Volkswagen get's it all for free. What about making the editorial contribution part of the overall discussion about performances and fair ad deals?

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