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TWST: So what is your verdict on the online strategies on the consumer publishers at the moment that you cover?

Mr. Hoey: I think the best one is obviously, the most comprehensive strategy, has to be the one being rolled out at the moment by EMAP (EMA.L). And strategies also of companies like VNU (956373.BE), on its consumer side also very extensive. Both have been reasonably early in terms of their investments and both have adopted cross-media strategies, whereby they are trying to leverage the value of their media assets across their whole media portfolio, if you like, in terms of getting very full and very complete Internet sites up and running with very specific niches in mind. So, rather than just having what we can call complimentary websites, ie. the web version of what we already do in print format, they are much looking at what their communities of users want and actually require in terms of an online site, and I would say that’s the key. I think other consumer publishers have been guilty in the past in terms of their Internet sites of just adopting a rather passive strategy of putting what they had in print format online, and hoping that somehow miraculously this was going to double up their Internet advertising revenues. Not the case.

TWST: So from an investor point of view, you mentioned that EMAP and VNU are rather expensive. Do you think these are still the stocks to look at? Or are there undervalued players?

Mr. Hoey: The consumer publishing side is rather expensive at the moment. If you look at a lot of the companies, anything that’s had some kind of Internet strategy has been ramped up quite significantly in value. So it’s difficult to say there’s anything that looks significantly cheap. And so again, you’re starting to be pushed back on to relative sort of comparative valuations within the sector. With comparing one against the other and then again, you’d come up with VNU certainly does not look that cheap on any kind of valuation promises, but EMAP does. So again, that would be the one consumer publishing recommendation that we would be putting forward to investors at the moment.

TWST: You mentioned that they have a strategy that they try to gauge what their customer wants and the readership response. How do they go about doing that?

Mr. Hoey: Well, a lot of them already have. With EMAP remember it’s a publisher of specialty magazines, a lot of that is done by subscription, so they do have a database as such that they can exploit. But a lot of it has been sort of done through their own efforts through the division called EMAP Digital, which has actually brought together people from the separate media divisions, be that radio, consumer magazines, exhibitions, what have you. And actually, pooling knowledge as to what could be an effective online strategy. First of all taking all the knowledge they have with their end markets but also what they can actually offer in terms of their kind of competence and the expertise they have within these particular divisions. So I don’t think anyone has got a unique recipe for saying: “Okay, this is how we are going to identify what is and what is not going to work online.” And with EMAP, did have a slight head start in their American division which they acquired. Had already had 2 to 3 years of trial expertise in running its own online division. And there is a lot of expertise that Emap is just sort of transferring over from that experience. On EMAP we have a buy recommendation, and our price target there is 1500 pence.