Angel: Dave Newcorn. One of his attributes is that he was Packaging World’ s editor, so he knows the business very well. We actually hired him in 1995 as an editor, but he just loves online stuff, and we made him our VP of e-media and gave him his own department, including hiring an in-house Web developer, Tom Wolf, who is a genius. Dave and Tom have been very innovative, and we’ ve organically developed our own technology for most of our Web products. We have this one-click technology, which we apply to all of our Web lead-generation products. The technology we use offers full contact reporting— permission based— and gives an advertiser complete information with name, company, address, email, phone, and tells you what specific call-to-action item they clicked on and even what time.
minonline: What makes it“ one click” technology?
Angel: We invested a lot of money in our circulation, and what we’ ve done is marry the technology from the Web with our database on the back end. So when John Smith or Jane Smith from Procter & Gamble comes in and views a video, if they’ re not registered, they’ ve got to register. And then every subsequent time they visit our site they don’ t have to register, because we already have their information. So if they click on a white paper today and two hours later they go to a video, they won’ t have to register again, yet the advertiser will get full contact information. So it’ s a very user-friendly experience, and we clearly put a disclaimer there that by clicking on this video, you’ ve agreed to release your information to an advertiser.
minonline: And if you choose not to agree to release your information?
Angel: Then you put yourself in a bucket of people whose information we don’ t release. It’ s been working real well. We have 109,000 registered users of our Web products, and we’ ve generated over 600,000 leads for our customers in the last three years. We have about an 80 % renewal rate on our Web products, so we’ ve really grown that portion of our business. We ' re very proud of this, and it motivates us to continue innovating. It ' s the reality of the Web.
minonline: That represents what percentage of Summit Media’ s revenue?
Angel: We anticipate that the Web will be about 25-30 % of our overall revenue in 2011. And a lot of that’ s going to come from the custom division that we’ ve launched.
minonline: And where does print fit in?
Angel: I’ d be lying if I said the decline in print advertising hasn’ t taken its toll, but 2009 aside, last year we grew pretty significantly in print— we grew about 20 %. We put together an " SMG Network " integrated package for our customers that incorporates print and any type of online product, and what it has done is encourage print spending. It calculates a monthly payment, so we don’ t nickel and dime them with 10 different invoices.
minonline: Where do you see the largest potential for revenue growth looking ahead at the rest of 2011 and into 2012?
Angel: We’ re going to have a real opportunity with custom content and marketing services. We’ re going to be developing custom e-newsletters, e-show dailies, microsites— and I see a really big upswing in our revenue this year from that. And we ' ll continue investing in events— I ' m convinced nothing will replace face-to-face interaction, no matter what technology brings.