[Correction: Oterhals writes in his blog that Göteborg-Posten, and therefore also Media Culpa, got the figures wrong. The Lypsyl ad was shown 35 million times, not clicked on.]
I just arrived at the World Association of Newspapers and the 61th World Newspaper Congress/15th World Editors Forum in Göteborg, Sweden. While waiting for the next session to begin I am reading a few summaries of things that I missed earlier during the congress. Yesterday there was a Digital Round Table seminar which included Jo Christian Oterhals, Chairman of the board at Nettby community AS in Norway. Nettby, with more than 700,000 registered users, is widely popular, and profitable. Each member pays 35 Norwegian kroner for a 20 day long membership and the site made 13.2 million kroner in profits (unclear during which period).
Oterhals revealed some impressive numbers during a recent collaboration with lip balm company Lypsyl, where members could send kisses to other Nettby users. The first two weeks user sent more than 2 million kisses and the ad got more than 35 million clicks in total.
During the round table, Martha Stone, Director, SFN project, World Association of Newspapers presented some interesting facts from the World Digital Media Trends report. She said that about 25 percent of the total revenue online goes to media companies and the rest goes to Google. She also said that Scandinavia is the region which is leading the trend that online editions one day will produce higher revenues that the printed papers, with Swedish daily Aftonbladet as an example where this has already happened (when it comes to ad revenue).
Footnote: Check Editors Weblog for more.