Multi-media advertising is the integrated use of multiple media in a single advertising campaign. Media companies, including newspapers, are choosing a multi-media advertising approach to improve advertiser service, generate incremental revenue, leverage the power of multiple media assets, and to create an edge against competitors. Multi-media advertising strategy is considered one of the most promising opportunities for publishing companies today -- a "fringe" development some see as moving to mainstream applications in the next few years.

In fact, many media companies studied for this report that have launched multi-media advertising strategies have seen impressive incremental revenue from US$5 million in the first year of operation to US$50 million for a newspaper that has been exploring multi-media advertising for five years.

The INMA report was produced based on interviews with more than 30 media company executives, multimedia advertising directors, researchers, advertising agency executives and thinkers, as well as the study of dozens of multimedia advertising reports and studies.

The report examines experiences of innovators such as Nord Jyske Medier in Denmark; RBS in Brasil; TorStar in Canada; and Tribune, Belo, The New York Times, USA Today, Arizona Republic, and Media General in the United States.

Driving the move toward multi-media advertising -- for both media companies and advertisers -- is the number of "media touchpoints" that have emerged in the past quarter century. Instead of media consumption habits that are consistent and easy to track over time, the report argues the "touchpoints" have created new media options from which consumers can choose -- ranging from traditional media like newspapers, radio, and television, to the emerging media such as wireless telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), kiosks, electronic billboards, web sites, interactive television, teletext, e-mail, and others.

In addition to profiling the innovative first-movers among publishing companies, "Embracing the Power of Multi-Media Advertising" brings together research from the packaged goods industry, advertising agencies, press associations, and others that build the case for multi-media advertising even as some warn of potential pitfalls as systems are implemented.

About the author. Martha L Stone is a multimedia news author, speaker and consultant. She is training director for IFRA's Newsplex, Newsroom of the Future, at the University of South Carolina. She edited the MUDIA report, an in-depth report on the state of multimedia news operations in Europe, and presented the research to the European Parliament in 2002. Ms. Stone is senior consultant for Innovation International Media Consulting, which takes her around the world reorganising newsrooms for multimedia.