Businesses

Activity during the past year

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In keeping with its strategic plan (Plan Active 2009), Lagardère Active has initiated a transition toward digital in all of its activities.

Magazine publishing

Lagardère Active publishes in the most flourishing segments – including women’s, news and celebrity magazines – in which it has rung up excellent circulation and audience numbers.
In a pioneering effort to encourage the magazine-publishing market to release circulation figures in a timely manner, in the summer of 2007 Lagardère Active began the quarterly publication of its circulation figures according to French press circulation audit bureau OJD.
The magazine Public, which created the new-generation women’s celebrity market and is now one of the field’s uncontested leaders, has achieved uninterrupted growth since its launch four years ago, with circulation exceeding 430,000 copies per issue.
Sales of Elle have increased for the third consecutive year, reaching 345,500 copies at the end of 2007, thus confirming a fundamental rising trend.
Paris Match, France’s leading pictorial news magazine, put in a solid performance with an 8.5% increase in its paid circulation in France to reach 655,000 copies in 2007, its highest level in 10 years.
Télé 7 Jours stabilized its circulation in a very competitive market, achieving one of the market’s best performance figures with 1,588,000 copies.
International development accelerated in 2007 with successful launches in Italy (Riders) and in such high-potential countries as Russia (Domoï and StarHit) and China (Quo).

Radio

Lagardère Active expanded the audiences for its three flagship radio stations: Europe 1, a general-interest news station and leader among high-income-group individuals and the 25-59 demographic; Europe 2, renamed Virgin Radio, which offers exclusive, innovative, offbeat content designed to appeal to its constantly growing young audience; and RFM, which is France’s No. 2 adult music station.
Outside France, Lagardère Active Radio International, with 33.5 million daily listeners, strengthened its presence in emerging countries (Eastern Europe, India and the Middle East) with very strong growth in advertising revenues.

Television

Lagardère Active’s TV division operates the group’s special-interest channels, with a focus on two growth segments: youth and music.
With a strong presence in digital terrestrial television – including Gulli, the No. 1 free children’s and youth channel, and Canal J, the leading channel among 4- to 14-year-olds – the TV division aims to become a leading player on all platforms by offering several creative projects related to the launch of personal mobile television (PMT).
Europe 2 TV – renamed Virgin 17 at the end of 2007 – aims to position itself as the DTT network’s standard-setting music channel.
In the field of audiovisual production, Lagardère Active is playing a growing leadership role in the production of prime-time drama and comedy, with over 100 hours produced and plans to expand its production of studio-based shows (entertainment and new formats).

Digital

Lagardère Active is accelerating its pace in the digital realm. After giving a number of its websites a total makeover in 2007 (www.elle.fr, www.jdd.fr, www.premiere.fr, www.tele7.fr), the digital division is planning to create over 100 new sites by 2009, a dozen or so of them French.
At the same time, Lagardère Active pursued its external growth policy through a series of acquisitions (Newsweb, Jumpstart, IdRégie, Nextedia) designed to strategically position the group over the entire Internet value chain in France and abroad.
Lagardère Active confirms its objective of generating closer to 10% as opposed to 5% of its sales from activities in the digital sector by the end of 2009.

Advertising sales

Lagardère Publicité, which was formed through the merger of Interdeco and Lagardere Active Publicité, is France’s second-largest media buying agency. It now combines the entire sales forces of the press and audiovisual segments.
Through an unprecedented advertising campaign organized around the teaser, “Emma, je t’aime!”, Lagardère Publicité successfully developed an effective cross-media offering made possible by its diverse range of brands. The campaign’s impact clearly demonstrated the strength of the range of advertising solutions available to its advertisers (6,500 customers for 180 media brands marketed).

Outlook for 2008

After streamlining its portfolio of magazines and consolidating its geographical presence in 2007, Lagardère Active intends to make the most of its competitive advantages by accelerating growth in 2008. This dynamic is reflected in a search for new areas to explore, the capture of new audience and broadcast share, and sustained development of its radio and magazine publishing activities in emerging countries (particularly Russia and China), as well as via a continuing shift toward digital in all its activities.

Leading positions

• Leading publisher of leisure and entertainment magazines Worldwide
• Leading publisher of general-audience magazines in France more than 10 weeklies in France
• More than 10 weeklies in France among the leaders in their category
• Leading media group in digital audience with 10.1 million unduplicated unique visitors monthly in France and more than 20 million unique visitors worldwide
• Second-largest magazine publishing group in Spain
• Third-largest magazine publishing group in Russia.
• No. 1 in stock production (drama and comedy, documentaries, animation)
• Leading group of radio stations in Russia
• Leading player in the music-channel segment
• Second-largest media buying agency in France, and the leading agency in terms of diversity with 180 media brands (Group and outside publishers combined)
• Leading foreign publisher in Italy, Spain and Japan (and, by copyright license agreements, in China)