Newspaper – for free

Economic recession reshaped the newspaper market: fewer people buy newspapers but the popularity of free ones is growing. A good example of the latter is Metropol, a nationwide daily newspaper that is a real success story. We spoke to Metropol CEO Péter Hivatal and sales director Csaba Guttengéber about the peculiarities of the market. They told our magazine that currently the market of daily papers is expanding in Central and South America and Russia. In Hungary seven dailies are competing and the majority of them have seen their sales decline significantly – it is very difficult to compete with the internet. From these seven papers only Metropol is free and with its 400,000 copies handed out daily it has the highest circulation; on average, one copy is read by 2-2.2 people. Two thirds of Metropol readers do not read other newspapers and their main interest is domestic news. Recently 40 new towns were added to the Metropol network – which now consists of 59 towns – and further expansion is envisaged. Modern technology (GPS, smartphones, etc.) is used to supervise distribution points. Since 2010 Metropol has been the number one paper in Hungary if revenue from advertisements (at rate card price) is considered. It is part of the concept that as a daily paper Metropol can do magazine-type campaigns, e.g. local, target group-segmented sample distribution, wrapping, etc. Its specialty is reaching masses in a creative and spectacular way, somewhere between ATL and BTL.