ADVERTISING PRINTING
Advertising printing stands for about 40percent of the total printing market. For the advertising printing it is typical that that the print buyer and the target group for the information are not the same. The print buyer pays the printer and distributor for delivering advertising material to the target group. For the advertising market it is most important to develop distribution channels where the advertisements meet their target groups.
It is known that the increase of TV channels has lead to changes in behavior of the viewers. When the consumer has many commercial channels he tends to change channel when there is a commercial break in the program. This means that the commercial will lose its effect, and at the same time the TV channel will lose its viewer. Thus the increase in TV channels has a negative effect on TV media. The effect of digital TV is not yet seen, but experience with increasing number of commercial channels has affected interest in digital TV negatively. A fact is that in some countries increase in TV channels has led to increasing advertising in magazines and newspapers. A result of growth in the overall advertising market, and of the problems advertiser have to find their target groups on TV, is that advertising printing will continue to grow.
DIGITAL PRINTING
Digital printing has entered the market during the last years, and significant development in the digital printing tech will happen during the next years. Digital printing today is, however, more to compare with high volume office printing than with conventional printing.
For the reader the digital printing is identical to the conventional print. The print is built from ink and paper and seen by the eye in exactly the same way. The big difference is how the print is produced.
In conventional printing the information on the printing cylinder is either on offset plates or gravure cylinders. The prints in a print run are all identical. In digital printing every copy can be different as the information on the printing cylinder changes from one sheet to the next. This means that the press must be programmed and controlled by a computer. The initial programming work is big and the transferring of data to the printing cylinders makes the press significantly slower than conventional presses. Prints can, however, be made on demand, and there is less waste in digital printing.
Digital printing is today most suitable for short runs. In this area it has also generated new printed products, which previously were too expensive to produce. The printing machines are also relatively small, and their productivity relatively low. In the future, however, digital press will develop, and their speed and productivity will make them competitive with conventional printing. Today they have taken some small jobs from sheet fed offset, but in the future their competitive ability will gradually develop to bigger products. This does not mean that the total volume of printing on paper changes.
In the future there will also be combinations of conventional and digital printing. The conventionally printed products will be complemented by digitally printed elements.
When the media market turns digital, the techniques for printing on paper will develop too. Prepress operations will in the future be totally filmless. The techniques for making textile printing cylinders will regardless of printing method utilize digital technology. This will reduce make ready times, and make it easy to change the printed information. The use of digital technology makes it possible to produce short runs competitively. By combining different printing methods it will also be possible to make demographic print runs, where every copy is different. This development of conventional printing is necessary to keep it competitive in the future.
