Singapore Press Holdings reached 73% of Singaporeans during the week of July 12th alone. It owns a variety of news platforms with its digital reach outweighing print. 

“[Our reach] comes from our unique perspective. We have a reach in Singapore ... spread out with several products,” Ignatius Low, chief operating officer at Singapore Press Holdings, reported at the INMA Asia/Pacific News Media Summit last week.

Its digital reach is more than making up for decline in print reach, while its outdoor screens of news in public spaces in Singapore has been drawing a huge reach as well, surpassing print.  

“How do we use data to redefine our daily proposition to our clients?” Low posed. Simply by gathering data, he answered. 

One way Singapore Press Holdings collects data is from a commissioned study with GFK, a market researching brand out of Singapore, looking at audience interaction across all platforms. The GFK commissioned study was led by a research team aiming to understand its audience media consumption across different platforms. The data showed which platforms the audience was spending the most time with.  

The study found 45% of the audience visited at least one of the top five news properties of Singapore Press Holdings. “Many studies have shown that the message is shown on different platforms, you get an increase in audience, it repeats, ” Low said about how SPH grows its audience reach. 

Low mentioned the importance of “cross-comparing” what the other digital properties the audience is using: “We can see our competitors, we can see which of the titles have complementaries with us, and if we can co-market with them.”

Low also discussed how co-marketing can work, starting with understanding brand impact on your audience. Singapore Press Holdings commissioned a brand impact study with Kantar Connect to survey customers on “which platforms most influence their buying decisions,” Low said.  

From that information, the study team broke down the data into which brands are the most influential. The team can then understand which media platform can be used for that audience. 

“We are using the this audit tool to gauge the effectiveness of our media platforms,” Low said. “The reason for this is very simple: We feel that in an age of data, it’s very easy to come to the conclusion that the purchase it determined by the last click. But in reality, the purchasing decision comes from all of the impressions the user has seen.”

Looking at the impressions to the audience that drives them to purchase gives an opportunity to create fresh advertising marketing that can influence the audience’s media selection. 

Low gave an example of how companies cannot always target users based on their last click before a purchase. A user purchasing something cheap such as cereal might be able to be targeted based on their last click because it’s not a purchase one might think over for very long. But a user purchasing a new BMW is not purchasing based on their last click online. Instead, “it’s the result of years and years of programming, through ads that you see, not just online. But on billboards and newspapers,” he said. 

Singapore Press Holdings is redefining value to its clients by focusing on engagement: “We’ve got to look at how we can make our platforms work in a seamless way to our clients,” Low said. User engagement goes up when the platforms are easy to navigate for users. 

Singapore Press Holdings also focuses on launching products without incurring additional costs to the users to drive engagement. Offering content on multi-platforms such as print, radio, digital, and publicly has worked as an advantage to the media company.

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