Abstract (eng)
For more than a decade, media companies and especially newspapers have been extending their activities to the internet. Above all, they offer „hard news“ which they update quickly. The number of users and the time of use on the internet is rising constantly, but the economic success has yet to happen for a lot of media companies. At the same time, authors like McDowell are criticizing, that the future of journalism is never discussed from the viewpoint of single media outlets, but from the viewpoint of the whole profession. This is why many companies are missing the opportunity to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
One way to set oneself apart from one‘s competitors can be to drive a forceful brand policy. This is even more true in the case of the internet, as is shown by the theoretical part of this study. The reasons for this are the economic characteristics of media goods and digital goods. The success of a media outlet on the internet greatly depends on its ability to attract users. At the same time, more offerings than ever are entering the market, on which there is, despite all increases in users and time of use, only a limited supply of attention. Because of the dependence on news agencies and other factors, the offerings of the media companies seem, to some degree, interchangeable.
An interrogation of experts, who are responsible for the marketing policy at Austrian online-newspapers, showed, that the brands of the newspapers are highly valued. But the development of online media brands doesn‘t seem to have a long history. In none of the cases analyzed, a clear brand identity was being communicated to the staff. The experts also admitted, that the development of their brand strategies is still in an early stage. Also, the influence of the advertising businesson the brand policy of media firms was examined. The experts found that the competition between online-newspapers is intense because of the concentration of on bare numbers.