With a relatively small but highly engaged media market, Finland’s Sanoma operates in a self-contained digital ecosystem.

During a recent INMA Webinar presented by the INMA Advertising Initiative, members heard from Tuomas Airisto, chief commercial officer (B2B) at Sanoma Media Finland, about how the company is driving growth in digital advertising by focusing on trust, attention, and results.

The small country, with only 5.6 million people and a similarly sized Finnish-speaking population globally, boasts some of the highest levels of trust in news worldwide, Airisto said, noting that of global populations, “Finns trust the news the most.”

In fact, 3 million Finns — over half the population — still read subscription newspapers regularly.

Sanoma Media Finland has two main divisions: news media and entertainment. Between its print, digital, and broadcast assets, Sanoma reaches almost every Finnish adult weekly, Airisto said: “In digital, it’s 77% of the Finns we reach as well and a market leader when it comes to subs and advertising as a whole.”

Still, there are challenges: Finland’s total advertising market sits at around €1.3 billion, with digital now accounting for nearly 60% of spend. In the past 15 to 20 years, the media industry has lost around €500 million in print ad revenue — much of it to platforms like Google and Meta.

Winning back social

In 2020, Sanoma made the bold decision to compete with social platforms and reclaim the ad spend that had been diverted to them. The company approached this not simply from a publisher’s perspective but by rethinking the advertiser’s use case.

“At the time, 40% of the digital investments went to branding and awareness, and 60% to the lower part of the funnel for prospective marketing and conversions,” Airisto said.  

Most of the growth was at the bottom of the funnel, where social platforms excelled. While Sanoma had a strong market share in top-of-funnel branding campaigns, it was underperforming in conversion-driven advertising.

“So we decided to go head-to-head on social,” he said.

Four steps to better metrics

Sanoma launched a series of initiatives designed to deliver better performance metrics and increase competitiveness with social media — without sacrificing its editorial values or user experience.

1. Social display ads. Sanoma became one of the first publishers globally to introduce a product called “social display,” repurposing ad creatives designed for Facebook in Sanoma’s premium display inventory.

This allowed advertisers to extend their campaign reach with consistent creative assets while benefiting from Sanoma’s stronger audience trust.

“Other publishers in Finland have followed or innovated further, and it’s growing,” Airisto said. “I think it’s all about growing the category, not trying to compete head-to-head within the local markets.”

2. Video advertising. Sanoma also turned its focus to outstream video and began measuring and comparing attention metrics between its video ads and those on social media.

The results showed that users engaged more deeply with video on Sanoma’s platforms — scrolling more slowly and staying engaged for longer periods. This resulted in a lower cost-per-view-through for advertisers.

“That leads to the price competitiveness,” Airisto said, and “gives publishers a tool against social.”

3. Self-service ad platform. Inspired by Meta’s Business Manager and Google Ads, Sanoma launched its own self-service advertising platform tailored to direct clients.

Initially designed for agencies, it was later expanded to serve direct customers looking for an easy way to launch campaigns. “It’s really easy to use and get access to social display to enlarge the reach of their social campaigns,” Airisto said.

Although creating that was challenging and required significant investment, the product is gaining traction: “It is becoming a third platform on advertisers’ desktops and we’re innovating this further,” he said.

New innovations include first-party data, the ability to upload customers’ CRM data and match it with a high number of identified users, build and target customer groups, and more.

4. ROI-focused campaign results. Of course, for advertisers, it’s all about performance. By using tools such as CRM data matching and insight generation, Sanoma enables brands to understand who is visiting their sites, who is in their databases, and how those users interact across Sanoma properties.

“Clients are saying that you can deliver better results than Facebook. The data shows it,” he said. “There’s still a lot of difficulties to make this simple and comprehensive for customers and teach the agencies to do the measurements … but we see results piling up.”

Driven by trust

The global geopolitical climate has also worked in Sanoma’s favour, Airisto said. As misinformation, lack of fact-checking, and brand safety concerns rise on platforms like Facebook, advertisers are showing renewed interest in trusted, local media.

Sanoma has leaned into this, emphasising its editorial integrity, high user trust, and domestic roots. However, Airisto stressed, all these elements “will not be enough if the ROI is not there.”  

For now, efforts are paying off. Digital advertising has kept pace with the growth of search and social media. And Airisto said he knows of at least one company whose digital advertising outperformed search and social in the past two years.

“I think it’s very interesting; a renaissance in publishers’ digital advertising — at least in Finland — that we are facing potentially now.”

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