For two of the speakers at the Power of Print Conference in Barcelona, completely new approaches - and publications - were the required missing element of the newspaper industry. Peter Vandevanter, vice president of Targeted Products spoke about his company's personalised newspapers - for which he has coined the term 'Individuated'.
Readers receive home delivery of their 'Individuated' newspaper on the days they're free to read it, and personalised 'I-News' delivered digitally on the days they're not. 'I-News' is also available in a printable format for readers that choose to print it, alongside coupons for coffee or other products they ask for - an advertiser's dream! Vandevanter said that advertising rates for the I-product are ten times print advertising rates.
Martim Avillez Figueiredo, publisher and editor in chief of new Portugese publication I described how it "deconstructs the newspaper and rebuilds something different." He explained that "the idea is not to build a new daily paper but to try to build a new media brand."
I differs from traditional newspapers in a variety of ways, most noticeably its layout. Steering away from separating the publication into sections such as politics, sports and economy, I is instead divided into sections that follow people's reading patterns. It opens with editorial and opinion in the first section, small news summaries in the second, in-depth articles for the third and a 'mélange' of news including sport for the fourth.
Both methods are new takes on a printed newspaper, and contradict declarations of the "death of the newspaper", which Gavin O'Reilly, president of the World Association of Newspapers and CEO of Independent News and Media described as "misleading" in the conference's opening speech. Whilst these two new projects cannot single-handedly turn the industry around, they are representative of the kind of innovation that it requires to move forward.
Source: World Association of Newspapers Press Release
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Power of Print Conference: innovating to boost circulation and profits
With newspapers working out how to simultaneously appeal to their readers, monetise their content and be successful businesses, some publications are taking unusual steps to do so. Speaking at the World Association of Newspapers' Power of Print Conference in Barcelona, Kylie Davis of the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun-Herald, and Rodrigo Fino of Garcia Media described what steps their publications have taken.
Davis discussed the "sacrosanct" relationship between editorial and advertising, and how the Morning Herald and Sun Herald have toed the line between the two and come up with a profitable solution. They create high quality specialised magazines of 'advertorials', bundled with the newspaper but clearly separated from the main editorial.
The content of the magazines is written by news staff to strict standards, on a brief provided by the advertiser. ""We're not selling content, we're selling context," explained Davis. She said that the specialised publications have brought the newspaper company close to $5 million AU (€2.54 million) of new revenue in under 12 months.
Meanwhile, Venezuelan newspaper El Informador has increased its circulation by 14% this year. Fino, president of owner Garcia Media, described how this was largely to do with the papers redesign to focus on hyperlocal news, using the front pages to encourage comments and interaction from readers. "As a regional newspaper, we needed to fit in closely with readers, which means calling on important people in the region to give information on their specialties," he explained.
Source: World Association of Newspapers
Davis discussed the "sacrosanct" relationship between editorial and advertising, and how the Morning Herald and Sun Herald have toed the line between the two and come up with a profitable solution. They create high quality specialised magazines of 'advertorials', bundled with the newspaper but clearly separated from the main editorial.
The content of the magazines is written by news staff to strict standards, on a brief provided by the advertiser. ""We're not selling content, we're selling context," explained Davis. She said that the specialised publications have brought the newspaper company close to $5 million AU (€2.54 million) of new revenue in under 12 months.
Meanwhile, Venezuelan newspaper El Informador has increased its circulation by 14% this year. Fino, president of owner Garcia Media, described how this was largely to do with the papers redesign to focus on hyperlocal news, using the front pages to encourage comments and interaction from readers. "As a regional newspaper, we needed to fit in closely with readers, which means calling on important people in the region to give information on their specialties," he explained.
Source: World Association of Newspapers
Europe's newspaper industry must transform itself
Senior newspaper executives from around the world are meeting in Barcelona this week to discuss the future of print media. Experts agree that high quality and multimedia elements will ensure the newspaper's survival.
The Internet age has revolutionized the way people interact with media. But it has also sparked the demise of the printed newspaper.
In the United States, a number of regional papers have folded in the past two years. Others, such as the renowned Christian Science Monitor, have resorted to a weekly print issue and are otherwise "only" available online.
In Europe, however, newspaper publishers are looking for a more integrated approach, said Angela Mills Wade, executive director of the European Publishers' Council.
"We are in the most amazing state of transition from print to online right now," Wade said. "The challenge is to make sure that the interest in the content we're producing, no matter how it's distributed, is sufficient to continue financing that content." She said this could also involve paying for online content.
Wade said she did not believe that newspapers would die off in Europe, as is the case in the US.
"I think the difference between the US and Europe is that there's a more deep-seated cultural tradition in newspapers here and I think it would be harder to brush that away," Wade said.
Hans Joachim Fuhrmann, spokesman for the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers BDZV, agreed.
"The newspaper-reading culture here is completely different than in the US," Fuhrmann said. "We also have a much stronger regional concentration."
Volker Wolff, a professor at the University of Mainz's Journalism Seminar, said he thinks change will come.
"Of course, newspapers are going to die off here in Germany, too," Wolff said.
Change is necessary
Industry experts agree, though, that things have to change in the newspaper sector.
"Here in Germany, but also all over the western world, we are in a transformation process regarding the classical printed newspaper," Fuhrmann said. "Newspapers have to transform themselves into multimedia companies."
According to Wolff, newspapers should not try to compete directly with online content.
"Newspapers can't write the same things you find on the Internet," Wolff said. "They have to concentrate on regional information and also on background stories. The future of newspapers lies in qualitative valuable stories, like those magazines previously covered."
But this will have a corresponding price tag.
"For those which survive, it's going to be expensive," Wolff said. High-quality newspapers will cost more.
Question of the right solutions
Though newspapers are suffering, Wade said one shouldn't underestimate the amount of newspapers read.
According to figures by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), print newspapers attract more than 1.7 billion readers a day worldwide.
"Gavin O'Reilly, WAN's chairman, once said that more adults read a newspaper every day than eat a Big Mac every year," Wade said. "So though there may be a long term decline in percentage terms in newspaper consumption, there are nevertheless a growing number of people who have an appetite for reading news, comment and debate from trusted brands, from fact-based journalism."
WAN is convinced that dailies have a future.
"Print continues to be the main revenue generator for newspapers and it will continue to be for a long time," WAN spokesman Larry Kilman told news agency AFP. He said WAN believed that solutions existed to enable media companies to combine the paper and screen to be profitable.
A WAN conference on the power of print media vis-a-vis the Internet, especially at this time of economic crisis, is currently on in Barcelona until Thursday.
A new generation of newspaper readers
The integration of online elements and interactive features can attract younger readers, in particular, to a newspaper's site.
"The illness of non-reading has hit Germany just as much as other countries," Wolff said. This was particularly the case with the younger generation.
"In India, newspapers are a status symbol: if you can read, you have a newspaper," Wolff said. "Here in old Europe it's the same problem everywhere: an aging population, non-reading youth, a drop in advertising sales, dwindling markets."
But the German government is trying to get more people interested in newspapers and last year launched a national initiative for print media. It aims to increase public awareness of the importance of print media as a key political medium and is particularly geared towards promoting media competency among young readers.
Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Bernd Neumann, said, despite the enormous growth of electronic media, newspapers and magazines are still the key political media in German society.
"Whoever wants to get a reliable and multi-sided picture of fundamental political and societal issues remains dependent on the printed word," Neumann said at the initiative's annual meeting earlier this month.
According to Neumann, the printed word in particular encouraged democratic cohesion.
"As opposed to the Internet, it directs awareness to that which is important to everyone – independent of whether it is of personal interest for an individual or not," Neumann said.
But, he said that print and online media don't have to exclude each other, but rather be complementary.
"Whoever reads newspapers and magazines acquires the possibility to deal critically with Internet offers and profit more consciously from information sources," Neumann said.
Children and teenagers should, therefore, learn to differentiate between media, whether digital or classic, he said.
Source: dw-world.de
The Internet age has revolutionized the way people interact with media. But it has also sparked the demise of the printed newspaper.
In the United States, a number of regional papers have folded in the past two years. Others, such as the renowned Christian Science Monitor, have resorted to a weekly print issue and are otherwise "only" available online.
In Europe, however, newspaper publishers are looking for a more integrated approach, said Angela Mills Wade, executive director of the European Publishers' Council.
"We are in the most amazing state of transition from print to online right now," Wade said. "The challenge is to make sure that the interest in the content we're producing, no matter how it's distributed, is sufficient to continue financing that content." She said this could also involve paying for online content.
Wade said she did not believe that newspapers would die off in Europe, as is the case in the US.
"I think the difference between the US and Europe is that there's a more deep-seated cultural tradition in newspapers here and I think it would be harder to brush that away," Wade said.
Hans Joachim Fuhrmann, spokesman for the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers BDZV, agreed.
"The newspaper-reading culture here is completely different than in the US," Fuhrmann said. "We also have a much stronger regional concentration."
Volker Wolff, a professor at the University of Mainz's Journalism Seminar, said he thinks change will come.
"Of course, newspapers are going to die off here in Germany, too," Wolff said.
Change is necessary
Industry experts agree, though, that things have to change in the newspaper sector.
"Here in Germany, but also all over the western world, we are in a transformation process regarding the classical printed newspaper," Fuhrmann said. "Newspapers have to transform themselves into multimedia companies."
According to Wolff, newspapers should not try to compete directly with online content.
"Newspapers can't write the same things you find on the Internet," Wolff said. "They have to concentrate on regional information and also on background stories. The future of newspapers lies in qualitative valuable stories, like those magazines previously covered."
But this will have a corresponding price tag.
"For those which survive, it's going to be expensive," Wolff said. High-quality newspapers will cost more.
Question of the right solutions
Though newspapers are suffering, Wade said one shouldn't underestimate the amount of newspapers read.
According to figures by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), print newspapers attract more than 1.7 billion readers a day worldwide.
"Gavin O'Reilly, WAN's chairman, once said that more adults read a newspaper every day than eat a Big Mac every year," Wade said. "So though there may be a long term decline in percentage terms in newspaper consumption, there are nevertheless a growing number of people who have an appetite for reading news, comment and debate from trusted brands, from fact-based journalism."
WAN is convinced that dailies have a future.
"Print continues to be the main revenue generator for newspapers and it will continue to be for a long time," WAN spokesman Larry Kilman told news agency AFP. He said WAN believed that solutions existed to enable media companies to combine the paper and screen to be profitable.
A WAN conference on the power of print media vis-a-vis the Internet, especially at this time of economic crisis, is currently on in Barcelona until Thursday.
A new generation of newspaper readers
The integration of online elements and interactive features can attract younger readers, in particular, to a newspaper's site.
"The illness of non-reading has hit Germany just as much as other countries," Wolff said. This was particularly the case with the younger generation.
"In India, newspapers are a status symbol: if you can read, you have a newspaper," Wolff said. "Here in old Europe it's the same problem everywhere: an aging population, non-reading youth, a drop in advertising sales, dwindling markets."
But the German government is trying to get more people interested in newspapers and last year launched a national initiative for print media. It aims to increase public awareness of the importance of print media as a key political medium and is particularly geared towards promoting media competency among young readers.
Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Bernd Neumann, said, despite the enormous growth of electronic media, newspapers and magazines are still the key political media in German society.
"Whoever wants to get a reliable and multi-sided picture of fundamental political and societal issues remains dependent on the printed word," Neumann said at the initiative's annual meeting earlier this month.
According to Neumann, the printed word in particular encouraged democratic cohesion.
"As opposed to the Internet, it directs awareness to that which is important to everyone – independent of whether it is of personal interest for an individual or not," Neumann said.
But, he said that print and online media don't have to exclude each other, but rather be complementary.
"Whoever reads newspapers and magazines acquires the possibility to deal critically with Internet offers and profit more consciously from information sources," Neumann said.
Children and teenagers should, therefore, learn to differentiate between media, whether digital or classic, he said.
Source: dw-world.de
Personalised content: the way forward for the news industry?
Mine magazine represents a further effort in the on-demand initiative to diversify the print industry. The Time Inc. publication professes to deliver a fortnightly magazine personalised to the subscriber's interests. Mine's content is an assortment of articles from a selection of Time's Inc.'s publications, of which the reader must chose five titles. Upon subscription the reader is asked four questions of personal choice to further gauge their tastes.
Its editors aim to provide a printed alternative to the wealth of online information that users habitually sift through to find pieces appealing directly to their own interests. It was also perhaps inspired by online services offering catered-to-taste provision of information and entertainment, such as the DailyME.
Mine magazine is currently in the experimental stages, and experiencing inevitable teething problems of timing and distribution. But the possibilities for future success along this format are there. According to Slate writer and recipient of the magazine, Farhad Manjoo:
"Mine offers a model for a smoother transition from print to digital. It gives readers much of what we like about the Web but in a package that--until a color Kindle comes along--is much more practical. Even though I've been cutting down on the number of magazines I get at home, I'd sign up for Mine, and I bet others would as well. The model will also attract advertisers, too: The same information that the magazine uses to pick out my articles can also be used to target advertising, which means the mag can charge much higher ad rates."
If personalisation is a prospect for the magazine and online media publications, could this concept be applied to the printed newspaper industry? Online versions of many US newspapers currently participate in the service provided by DailyMe, which uses licensed stories coming in from 500 different titles and wires. Moreover, DailyMe began negotiations in February with news publishers about licensing its technology so that they will be able to offer similar personalised services on their own news pages. It may be that printed versions of papers should await the outcome of the glossy experiment before launching their own ventures, whereas their online counterparts could grasp this opportunity more immediately.
Source: Slate
Its editors aim to provide a printed alternative to the wealth of online information that users habitually sift through to find pieces appealing directly to their own interests. It was also perhaps inspired by online services offering catered-to-taste provision of information and entertainment, such as the DailyME.
Mine magazine is currently in the experimental stages, and experiencing inevitable teething problems of timing and distribution. But the possibilities for future success along this format are there. According to Slate writer and recipient of the magazine, Farhad Manjoo:
"Mine offers a model for a smoother transition from print to digital. It gives readers much of what we like about the Web but in a package that--until a color Kindle comes along--is much more practical. Even though I've been cutting down on the number of magazines I get at home, I'd sign up for Mine, and I bet others would as well. The model will also attract advertisers, too: The same information that the magazine uses to pick out my articles can also be used to target advertising, which means the mag can charge much higher ad rates."
If personalisation is a prospect for the magazine and online media publications, could this concept be applied to the printed newspaper industry? Online versions of many US newspapers currently participate in the service provided by DailyMe, which uses licensed stories coming in from 500 different titles and wires. Moreover, DailyMe began negotiations in February with news publishers about licensing its technology so that they will be able to offer similar personalised services on their own news pages. It may be that printed versions of papers should await the outcome of the glossy experiment before launching their own ventures, whereas their online counterparts could grasp this opportunity more immediately.
Source: Slate
Newspaper Circulation Grows Despite Economic Downturn: WAN
Despite the global financial crisis, newspaper circulation grew 1.3 percent world-wide in 2008, the President of the World Association of Newspapers said Wednesday in a speech that contradicted “misleading” reports predicting the imminent death of newspapers.
“The simple fact is that, as a global industry, our printed audience continues to grow,” said Gavin O’Reilly, President of the World Association of Newspapers and CEO of Independent News and Media.
“But you might say that this growth is taking place in the developing markets of the world and masks a continued downward trend in the developed markets. And to a degree this is true, but not the whole story, as newspaper companies in these markets have embraced digital technologies to further improve their audience reach,” he said in a speech opening the World Association of Newspapers Power of Print Conference in Barcelona, Spain.
Predicting the death of newspapers “seems to have reached the level of a new sport,” said Mr O’Reilly.
“That this doom and gloom about our industry has largely gone unanswered is, to me, the most bizarre case of willful self-mutilation ever in the annals of industry,” he said. “And it continues apace, with commentators failing to look beyond their simple rhetoric and merely joining the chorus that the future is online, online, online, almost to the exclusion of everything else. This is a mistake. This oversimplifies a rather complex issue.”
Mr O’Reilly said:
1.9 billion people read a paid daily newspaper every day.
Newspapers reach 41 percent more adults than the world wide web.
More adults read a newspaper every day than people eat a Big Mac every year.
“Whilst it may be true to say that in some regions, circulations are not a boom sector, newspapers continue to be a global mass media to be reckoned with, achieving a global average reach of over one third of the world’s population,” he said. “So if we are a declining industry, the definition of declining is a strange one. We are an industry with massive reach of the global population and one that achieves massive revenues.”
And while the financial crisis has clearly had a serious impact on newspaper revenues, the downturn is not worse for newspapers than for other industries. “This is not to deflect the seriousness of the situation, and it is very serious, but it remains a fact - all major media are suffering alongside our colleagues in other major business sectors,” he said.
Mr O’Reilly’s speech was based largely on preliminary data to be included in World Press Trends, the annual report from WAN to be published next month. The data shows:
Global newspaper circulation increased +1.3 percent in 2008, to almost 540 million daily sales, and was up +8.8 percent over five years. When free dailies are added, circulation rose +1.62 percent in 2008 and +13 percent over five years. Europe is the hotbed for free newspaper development - 23 percent of daily newspapers in Europe were free in 2008.
Newspaper circulation increased +6.9 percent in Africa last year, +1.8 percent in South America, and +2.9 percent in Asia. It decreased -3.7 percent in North America, -2.5 percent in Australia and Oceania, and -1.8 percent in Europe. But in many mature markets where circulation is declining, newspaper reach remains high -- many European countries continue to reach over 70 percent of the adult population with paid newspapers alone. In Japan, it’s 91 percent. In North America, it’s 62 percent.
Circulation gains are not only occurring in the emerging markets of China and India; 38 percent of countries reported gains in 2008, and 58 percent saw circulation increase over five years.
Though newspaper advertising revenues were down -5 percent in 2008, print media still takes 37 percent of world advertising revenues.
While the digital explosion has a global impact, it is not a uniform impact. The United States and the United Kingdom are most affected; the UK accounts for 38 percent of digital revenues in all of Europe. And compared to all of Europe, the United States has 62 percent of the total market.
In the United States, combined print and online newspaper audience grew 8 percent. Fifty-two percent of online newspaper readers spend the same amount of time as they did previously with newspaper content, 35 percent say they spend more time overall with newspaper content, and 81 percent of online newspaper readers say they’ve read a printed newspaper in the same week.
Although falling newspaper circulations are routinely blamed on the internet, the evidence paints a more complex picture, said Mr O’Reilly. “Why is it, that something as sophisticated as media consumption always get relegated to an oversimplified spat between print and online? Why must it always be a case of either or? Is it just possible that the consumer is capable of multi-tasking; is capable of consuming a multitude of media and that it need not necessarily be just online?"
Source: wan-press.org
“The simple fact is that, as a global industry, our printed audience continues to grow,” said Gavin O’Reilly, President of the World Association of Newspapers and CEO of Independent News and Media.
“But you might say that this growth is taking place in the developing markets of the world and masks a continued downward trend in the developed markets. And to a degree this is true, but not the whole story, as newspaper companies in these markets have embraced digital technologies to further improve their audience reach,” he said in a speech opening the World Association of Newspapers Power of Print Conference in Barcelona, Spain.
Predicting the death of newspapers “seems to have reached the level of a new sport,” said Mr O’Reilly.
“That this doom and gloom about our industry has largely gone unanswered is, to me, the most bizarre case of willful self-mutilation ever in the annals of industry,” he said. “And it continues apace, with commentators failing to look beyond their simple rhetoric and merely joining the chorus that the future is online, online, online, almost to the exclusion of everything else. This is a mistake. This oversimplifies a rather complex issue.”
Mr O’Reilly said:
1.9 billion people read a paid daily newspaper every day.
Newspapers reach 41 percent more adults than the world wide web.
More adults read a newspaper every day than people eat a Big Mac every year.
“Whilst it may be true to say that in some regions, circulations are not a boom sector, newspapers continue to be a global mass media to be reckoned with, achieving a global average reach of over one third of the world’s population,” he said. “So if we are a declining industry, the definition of declining is a strange one. We are an industry with massive reach of the global population and one that achieves massive revenues.”
And while the financial crisis has clearly had a serious impact on newspaper revenues, the downturn is not worse for newspapers than for other industries. “This is not to deflect the seriousness of the situation, and it is very serious, but it remains a fact - all major media are suffering alongside our colleagues in other major business sectors,” he said.
Mr O’Reilly’s speech was based largely on preliminary data to be included in World Press Trends, the annual report from WAN to be published next month. The data shows:
Global newspaper circulation increased +1.3 percent in 2008, to almost 540 million daily sales, and was up +8.8 percent over five years. When free dailies are added, circulation rose +1.62 percent in 2008 and +13 percent over five years. Europe is the hotbed for free newspaper development - 23 percent of daily newspapers in Europe were free in 2008.
Newspaper circulation increased +6.9 percent in Africa last year, +1.8 percent in South America, and +2.9 percent in Asia. It decreased -3.7 percent in North America, -2.5 percent in Australia and Oceania, and -1.8 percent in Europe. But in many mature markets where circulation is declining, newspaper reach remains high -- many European countries continue to reach over 70 percent of the adult population with paid newspapers alone. In Japan, it’s 91 percent. In North America, it’s 62 percent.
Circulation gains are not only occurring in the emerging markets of China and India; 38 percent of countries reported gains in 2008, and 58 percent saw circulation increase over five years.
Though newspaper advertising revenues were down -5 percent in 2008, print media still takes 37 percent of world advertising revenues.
While the digital explosion has a global impact, it is not a uniform impact. The United States and the United Kingdom are most affected; the UK accounts for 38 percent of digital revenues in all of Europe. And compared to all of Europe, the United States has 62 percent of the total market.
In the United States, combined print and online newspaper audience grew 8 percent. Fifty-two percent of online newspaper readers spend the same amount of time as they did previously with newspaper content, 35 percent say they spend more time overall with newspaper content, and 81 percent of online newspaper readers say they’ve read a printed newspaper in the same week.
Although falling newspaper circulations are routinely blamed on the internet, the evidence paints a more complex picture, said Mr O’Reilly. “Why is it, that something as sophisticated as media consumption always get relegated to an oversimplified spat between print and online? Why must it always be a case of either or? Is it just possible that the consumer is capable of multi-tasking; is capable of consuming a multitude of media and that it need not necessarily be just online?"
Source: wan-press.org
The Future is ChicagoNow
It's been eminently fashionable to bash Sam Zell for his gutting of Tribune Co., and with good reason—a copy of the Baltimore Sun I saw recently looked about as substantial as a cocktail napkin, and that was before the Sun's latest newsroom layoffs. The chain's other papers aren't much better, by all reports.
But Zell's minions have also been doing more innovation than a lot of their counterparts in the industry, fiddling with everything from radical redesigns to ambitious hyperlocal networks. And now Tribune seems ready to unleash its most interesting experiment in reinvention yet: ChicagoNow.
It's a little hard to see exactly what ChicagoNow is up to—the beta site is still very much a work in progress, with a launch promised in a few weeks. But there are strong hints available if you click around the site, and a very promising—even thrilling—description of what's coming in a promotional video here. The ChicagoNow staff is blogging about its progress, too.
At its core, ChicagoNow appears to be an effort to create a new kind of local site by aggregating and curating local bloggers, staff material and other content, with a heavy sprinkling of social features, mobile options and other goodies. The video called it "HuffingtonPost meets Facebook for Chicago," which may be a bit strong, but it's a healthy ambition. This is the sort of source-neutral, smartly curated, aggregation-heavy, social-savvy, distribution-prolific local site that every news organization should be doing. It's what Web-centric companies like HuffingtonPost (which already has its own local Chicago blog/aggregation site) do naturally.
It remains to be seen how ChicagoNow will grow from its sketchy beta—the initial hints of content are good, but it needs an interface, and a good one is shown in a teaser graphic on the home page, reproduced here—but the Zellots are taking a huge step in the right direction. Finally, at long last, something very different than just pasting the newspaper on a screen. (It sure beats weird, timid, token efforts like the NY Times' new "social media editor." Wow. Bold.)
ChicagoNow is probably too late to the game to really help Tribune, alas, given the crappy economics of the newspaper business these days. But at least one of the big publishers is trying something radical, visionary and out of the box. It's about damn time. Everybody else in the industry should be following the development of ChicagoNow closely—and scrambling like crazy to get their own curated, aggregated, social sites ready for their markets.
In other words, it's the obvious way to go, the kind of thing people like Jeff Jarvis and I have advocated for years—do what you do best and link to the rest, as Jeff aptly puts it. Phil Anschutz's Examiner.com is quietly building cookie-cutter curated, aggregated sites around the country, and the NBC-owned TV stations are doing the same. But as far as I know, Tribune is the first major newspaper company to take this overdue leap into the future in a major way in its home market—the market it knows best and in which it can bring its expertise and power to bear for readers (and advertisers). Kudos to them.
Source: recoveringjournalist.typepad.com
But Zell's minions have also been doing more innovation than a lot of their counterparts in the industry, fiddling with everything from radical redesigns to ambitious hyperlocal networks. And now Tribune seems ready to unleash its most interesting experiment in reinvention yet: ChicagoNow.
It's a little hard to see exactly what ChicagoNow is up to—the beta site is still very much a work in progress, with a launch promised in a few weeks. But there are strong hints available if you click around the site, and a very promising—even thrilling—description of what's coming in a promotional video here. The ChicagoNow staff is blogging about its progress, too.
At its core, ChicagoNow appears to be an effort to create a new kind of local site by aggregating and curating local bloggers, staff material and other content, with a heavy sprinkling of social features, mobile options and other goodies. The video called it "HuffingtonPost meets Facebook for Chicago," which may be a bit strong, but it's a healthy ambition. This is the sort of source-neutral, smartly curated, aggregation-heavy, social-savvy, distribution-prolific local site that every news organization should be doing. It's what Web-centric companies like HuffingtonPost (which already has its own local Chicago blog/aggregation site) do naturally.
It remains to be seen how ChicagoNow will grow from its sketchy beta—the initial hints of content are good, but it needs an interface, and a good one is shown in a teaser graphic on the home page, reproduced here—but the Zellots are taking a huge step in the right direction. Finally, at long last, something very different than just pasting the newspaper on a screen. (It sure beats weird, timid, token efforts like the NY Times' new "social media editor." Wow. Bold.)
ChicagoNow is probably too late to the game to really help Tribune, alas, given the crappy economics of the newspaper business these days. But at least one of the big publishers is trying something radical, visionary and out of the box. It's about damn time. Everybody else in the industry should be following the development of ChicagoNow closely—and scrambling like crazy to get their own curated, aggregated, social sites ready for their markets.
In other words, it's the obvious way to go, the kind of thing people like Jeff Jarvis and I have advocated for years—do what you do best and link to the rest, as Jeff aptly puts it. Phil Anschutz's Examiner.com is quietly building cookie-cutter curated, aggregated sites around the country, and the NBC-owned TV stations are doing the same. But as far as I know, Tribune is the first major newspaper company to take this overdue leap into the future in a major way in its home market—the market it knows best and in which it can bring its expertise and power to bear for readers (and advertisers). Kudos to them.
Source: recoveringjournalist.typepad.com
Newspapers will bounce back says Rothermere
by Paul Linford
Lord Rothermere today declared that his regional and national newspaper empire will "bounce back" despite a slump in revenues for the first half of its financial year.
Daily Mail and General Trust, which owns the Northcliffe Media regional publishing group, today published results for the period covering October 2008 - March 2009.
They revealed that advertising revenues at Northcliffe were down 31pc in the period, with profits for the UK papers down 91pc to £3.2m from £33m the previous year.
But in a video interview streamed on the company's website, DMGT chairman Lord Rothermere said the company would emerge from the recession stronger than when it went in.
"The newspapers will bounce back. They are going through a difficult time but that time is cyclical and consistent with the economic situation.
"DMGT is extremely well-positioned to come out of this recession in a stronger position than when we went into it."
Today's figures show overall revenues for Northcliffe Media fell 23pc from £216m in the equivalent period in 2007-2008 to £166m in 2008-2009.
Advertising revenues from property were down 54pc, recruitment 47pc, retail 24pc and motors 23pc, while circulation revenues fell 6pc.
The half-yearly report reveals that overall headcount fell by 500 as a result of the widespread cutbacks across Northcliffe announced in the first three months of the year.
This contributed to a 20pc fall in operating costs compared with the same period the previous year.
In his video interview, Lord Rothermere said he had found making the cutbacks "extremely difficult" and admitted he felt like he had let down those affected.
Source: holdthefrontpage.co.uk
Lord Rothermere today declared that his regional and national newspaper empire will "bounce back" despite a slump in revenues for the first half of its financial year.
Daily Mail and General Trust, which owns the Northcliffe Media regional publishing group, today published results for the period covering October 2008 - March 2009.
They revealed that advertising revenues at Northcliffe were down 31pc in the period, with profits for the UK papers down 91pc to £3.2m from £33m the previous year.
But in a video interview streamed on the company's website, DMGT chairman Lord Rothermere said the company would emerge from the recession stronger than when it went in.
"The newspapers will bounce back. They are going through a difficult time but that time is cyclical and consistent with the economic situation.
"DMGT is extremely well-positioned to come out of this recession in a stronger position than when we went into it."
Today's figures show overall revenues for Northcliffe Media fell 23pc from £216m in the equivalent period in 2007-2008 to £166m in 2008-2009.
Advertising revenues from property were down 54pc, recruitment 47pc, retail 24pc and motors 23pc, while circulation revenues fell 6pc.
The half-yearly report reveals that overall headcount fell by 500 as a result of the widespread cutbacks across Northcliffe announced in the first three months of the year.
This contributed to a 20pc fall in operating costs compared with the same period the previous year.
In his video interview, Lord Rothermere said he had found making the cutbacks "extremely difficult" and admitted he felt like he had let down those affected.
Source: holdthefrontpage.co.uk
The future of newspapers in a Digital Britain: MTM Roundtable summary
On 20 May, AOP attended an executive roundtable organized by strategic consultancy MTM London on the future of newspapers in a Digital Britain. Here is a summary of the key conclusions of the debate:
News consumption at an all time high
Few doubt that the demand for news consumption is higher than it has ever been, or that the increase in real-time delivery online and the growth of citizen journalism have changed the rules of engagement for traditional publishers.
However, print media is faced with declining sales, and advertising moving from print into cheaper and more accountable online alternatives. That situation is unlikely to change, even when the economy picks up.
Widening of news generation sources
There are of course some exceptions, but fundamentally news publishers need to move to new business models as the traditional model based on advertising revenues to fund editorial delivery is threatened.
A major challenge for the news industry is making online brands ultra-relevant to their audiences, for which embracing communities and democratising news creation are pivotal factors.
Debate may rage over the effect of the web on quality journalism, contrasting the output from trained journalists with enthusiastic amateurs, but the appetite for instant news and relevance to communities inevitably means a widening of news generation sources.
Paid content opportunities
Questions remain however as to how to make a viable business out of the changing culture of news delivery.
Subscriptions and micropayments for content are of course back on the table for discussion. While financial/business/B2B news specialists have built successful paid content businesses, the appetite for subscriptions among other news providers (and more to the point, their users) is still unclear.
Most believe there are still opportunities to develop digital business models that include paid content, but how, where and what readers will be willing to pay for in online media remains to be seen.
The news landscape in 2015
Finally, the panel was invited to offer a view of what the news landscape of 2015 will look like. It was generally agreed there will be some casualties and consolidation, leading a smaller sector with fewer bigger brands and the emergence of new online-only brands.
Consumers will access content across many platforms, relevance and quality will be key, and brands will continually need to reassess how they engage with audiences.
Source: ukaop.org.uk
News consumption at an all time high
Few doubt that the demand for news consumption is higher than it has ever been, or that the increase in real-time delivery online and the growth of citizen journalism have changed the rules of engagement for traditional publishers.
However, print media is faced with declining sales, and advertising moving from print into cheaper and more accountable online alternatives. That situation is unlikely to change, even when the economy picks up.
Widening of news generation sources
There are of course some exceptions, but fundamentally news publishers need to move to new business models as the traditional model based on advertising revenues to fund editorial delivery is threatened.
A major challenge for the news industry is making online brands ultra-relevant to their audiences, for which embracing communities and democratising news creation are pivotal factors.
Debate may rage over the effect of the web on quality journalism, contrasting the output from trained journalists with enthusiastic amateurs, but the appetite for instant news and relevance to communities inevitably means a widening of news generation sources.
Paid content opportunities
Questions remain however as to how to make a viable business out of the changing culture of news delivery.
Subscriptions and micropayments for content are of course back on the table for discussion. While financial/business/B2B news specialists have built successful paid content businesses, the appetite for subscriptions among other news providers (and more to the point, their users) is still unclear.
Most believe there are still opportunities to develop digital business models that include paid content, but how, where and what readers will be willing to pay for in online media remains to be seen.
The news landscape in 2015
Finally, the panel was invited to offer a view of what the news landscape of 2015 will look like. It was generally agreed there will be some casualties and consolidation, leading a smaller sector with fewer bigger brands and the emergence of new online-only brands.
Consumers will access content across many platforms, relevance and quality will be key, and brands will continually need to reassess how they engage with audiences.
Source: ukaop.org.uk
What Media Companies Could Learn From Microsoft: Smart Bundling
The media industry is desperately trying to find new business models for the online age. A lot of the current discussion revolves around micro payments: Is it possible to get users to pay small amounts for each newspaper article? The metaphor “iTunes for news” seems to become a favorite model of many media people, and major players such as News Corp. are already planning to roll out micro payments.
I think they couldn’t be more wrong about this. It’s actually amazing that traditional media companies seem to be largely blind to the factors that made their traditional business models successful.
One factor is the control of distribution channels (I blogged about this earlier). This is difficult to replicate in the digital world, because digital content is so easy to replicate and distribute.
But the second element is actually much easier to implement for digital content: Bundling.
When you buy a CD (if you are still old-fashioned enough to do that), you pay $15 or so for a collection of around 10 songs. Chances are that you are only interested in one or two of these songs. So why don’t you just buy the single? Mainly because the music industry since the 50s consciously pushed the album format, suggesting more value. Look, you only pay $1.50 per song on the album, but singles often cost $5 or more for just one song.
How about your newspaper (if you still read one)? How much would you be willing to pay for today’s front page story in the New York Times? How much for the top article in the business section or sports section? A dollar? A few cents? Nothing at all? This probably depends strongly on your interests. On any given day, there are probably a handful of articles in a newspaper that you would be willing to pay for specifically. Most of the rest are worth almost nothing to you. But you are willing to pay a couple of dollars for the whole thing.
This is bundling at work. It’s extremely difficult to set the right price for a piece of content, since different people will see very different value in it. Therefore, it’s often the most profitable solution to sell bundles of content items at a relatively low total price to extract the maximum value from customers.
A great example for this from another industry is Microsoft Office. This suite of productivity programs today completely dominates the market. Most people would probably agree that that’s not because Microsoft had the best programs –some people still have nostalgic feelings for WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. It’s because Microsoft sold the most attractive bundle of adequate programs at a very nice total price.
Here’s a simplified example that explains why this is smart: Let’s assume that User A wants to do a lot of word processing. He’s willing to pay $250 for a good word processor. He also wants a spreadsheet program, but is only willing to pay $50 for it.
User B is a finance guy and needs a good spreadsheet, for which he is willing to pay $350. He has no use for a word processor, but will pay $50 for a presentation program. And User C, a consultant, is willing to pay $200 for a presentation program, $100 for a word processor and $50 for a spreadsheet.
So, if you’re a spreadsheet vendor, what’s your ideal price? You could charge $350 and only sell to User B. You could charge $50 and sell to all three users, but that would leave money on the table. It’s really difficult to set the right price.
The best solution for this is to sell a bundle of a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program and charge $300 for it. At this price point, all our fictional users will buy the whole package and will be very happy, because they get a solution at a price they are willing to pay, but with much more overall functionality. The vendor could only make more money if he were able to charge each user an individual price (what economists call perfect price discrimination), but in most markets, that’s impossible.
Microsoft is great at coming up with bundled editions of its software. There are five different versions of Microsoft Office, all with different elements and at different price points, but of course all based on the same code base. Of course, it’s dangerous to overdo this. The seven different versions of Windows Vista were just confusing.
Obviously, bundling works for software. It also works for most forms of content, and it can work particularly well for digital content, because it’s so easy to build bundles of digital content at almost no additional cost.
Unfortunately, the music business largely missed the boat on this. By allowing Apple to sell individual songs through iTunes, the music industry broke the album model, and there’s probably no way to get it back. The new subscription models that some record labels are experimenting with are of course nothing but another form of bundling, although at a much lower average price point.
Newspaper publishers don’t seem to get bundling at all. That’s probably because in the world of the physical paper, they can only sell a very limited number of different bundles (maybe a local and a national edition). Even the only two newspapers that successfully charge for online editions, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, only sell one or two different online bundles. That’s simply stupid. Why isn’t there an expensive Pro version of the FT with full access to all market data, maybe even bundled with additional data sources? A cheap student version? A standard version just with the news and opinion columns? A version for people who want to read the FT primarily on their mobile device and just want the most important headlines? This kind of creative price differentiation would certainly extend the number of subscribers dramatically.
And the same applies to other parts of the media industry: Why doesn’t Hulu (or iTunes) sell an attractively priced subscription for its most popular shows, for instance a bundle that gives you The Office, Family Guy and Saturday Night Live, but also throws in a number of less well-known shows? If that’s the easiest way to get these shows, many people will sign up. The TV industry seems to believe that many people are going to pay $2 or more per episode on iTunes, they are almost certainly wrong. Nobody does that in traditional media. People pay for a satellite or cable subscription, which is a classic bundle. Deciding for each show individually if it is worth $2 is simply too much work. Pay-per-view only works for big-ticket items, and there’s no reason why this should be different in online media.
It’s really remarkable how little media companies seem to get the basic rules of bundling: Sell a bundle of products that have different value to different people at a price that seems really, really attractive when compared to the prices of the individual items. Make sure that you offer different editions that appeal to different target markets. That’s all. Just ask Bill Gates.
Source: Andreas Goeldi
I think they couldn’t be more wrong about this. It’s actually amazing that traditional media companies seem to be largely blind to the factors that made their traditional business models successful.
One factor is the control of distribution channels (I blogged about this earlier). This is difficult to replicate in the digital world, because digital content is so easy to replicate and distribute.
But the second element is actually much easier to implement for digital content: Bundling.
When you buy a CD (if you are still old-fashioned enough to do that), you pay $15 or so for a collection of around 10 songs. Chances are that you are only interested in one or two of these songs. So why don’t you just buy the single? Mainly because the music industry since the 50s consciously pushed the album format, suggesting more value. Look, you only pay $1.50 per song on the album, but singles often cost $5 or more for just one song.
How about your newspaper (if you still read one)? How much would you be willing to pay for today’s front page story in the New York Times? How much for the top article in the business section or sports section? A dollar? A few cents? Nothing at all? This probably depends strongly on your interests. On any given day, there are probably a handful of articles in a newspaper that you would be willing to pay for specifically. Most of the rest are worth almost nothing to you. But you are willing to pay a couple of dollars for the whole thing.
This is bundling at work. It’s extremely difficult to set the right price for a piece of content, since different people will see very different value in it. Therefore, it’s often the most profitable solution to sell bundles of content items at a relatively low total price to extract the maximum value from customers.
A great example for this from another industry is Microsoft Office. This suite of productivity programs today completely dominates the market. Most people would probably agree that that’s not because Microsoft had the best programs –some people still have nostalgic feelings for WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. It’s because Microsoft sold the most attractive bundle of adequate programs at a very nice total price.
Here’s a simplified example that explains why this is smart: Let’s assume that User A wants to do a lot of word processing. He’s willing to pay $250 for a good word processor. He also wants a spreadsheet program, but is only willing to pay $50 for it.
User B is a finance guy and needs a good spreadsheet, for which he is willing to pay $350. He has no use for a word processor, but will pay $50 for a presentation program. And User C, a consultant, is willing to pay $200 for a presentation program, $100 for a word processor and $50 for a spreadsheet.
So, if you’re a spreadsheet vendor, what’s your ideal price? You could charge $350 and only sell to User B. You could charge $50 and sell to all three users, but that would leave money on the table. It’s really difficult to set the right price.
The best solution for this is to sell a bundle of a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program and charge $300 for it. At this price point, all our fictional users will buy the whole package and will be very happy, because they get a solution at a price they are willing to pay, but with much more overall functionality. The vendor could only make more money if he were able to charge each user an individual price (what economists call perfect price discrimination), but in most markets, that’s impossible.
Microsoft is great at coming up with bundled editions of its software. There are five different versions of Microsoft Office, all with different elements and at different price points, but of course all based on the same code base. Of course, it’s dangerous to overdo this. The seven different versions of Windows Vista were just confusing.
Obviously, bundling works for software. It also works for most forms of content, and it can work particularly well for digital content, because it’s so easy to build bundles of digital content at almost no additional cost.
Unfortunately, the music business largely missed the boat on this. By allowing Apple to sell individual songs through iTunes, the music industry broke the album model, and there’s probably no way to get it back. The new subscription models that some record labels are experimenting with are of course nothing but another form of bundling, although at a much lower average price point.
Newspaper publishers don’t seem to get bundling at all. That’s probably because in the world of the physical paper, they can only sell a very limited number of different bundles (maybe a local and a national edition). Even the only two newspapers that successfully charge for online editions, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, only sell one or two different online bundles. That’s simply stupid. Why isn’t there an expensive Pro version of the FT with full access to all market data, maybe even bundled with additional data sources? A cheap student version? A standard version just with the news and opinion columns? A version for people who want to read the FT primarily on their mobile device and just want the most important headlines? This kind of creative price differentiation would certainly extend the number of subscribers dramatically.
And the same applies to other parts of the media industry: Why doesn’t Hulu (or iTunes) sell an attractively priced subscription for its most popular shows, for instance a bundle that gives you The Office, Family Guy and Saturday Night Live, but also throws in a number of less well-known shows? If that’s the easiest way to get these shows, many people will sign up. The TV industry seems to believe that many people are going to pay $2 or more per episode on iTunes, they are almost certainly wrong. Nobody does that in traditional media. People pay for a satellite or cable subscription, which is a classic bundle. Deciding for each show individually if it is worth $2 is simply too much work. Pay-per-view only works for big-ticket items, and there’s no reason why this should be different in online media.
It’s really remarkable how little media companies seem to get the basic rules of bundling: Sell a bundle of products that have different value to different people at a price that seems really, really attractive when compared to the prices of the individual items. Make sure that you offer different editions that appeal to different target markets. That’s all. Just ask Bill Gates.
Source: Andreas Goeldi
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Saving journalism, a farthing at a time
Newspapers are struggling to make ends meet online. The answer is not to give content away but to sell it – for peanuts
Ever since Rupert Murdoch announced plans to put his digital titles behind a paywall, claiming the "free" web was dead, the rest of the media have either pooh-poohed his proposals, or nervously wondered if they should do likewise.
A great deal of online content is profitably charged for – notably music and porn – but news struggles. With the exception of some high-value material from publications like the Wall Street Journal, news doesn't seem able to turn a buck. Experiments in charging have largely failed – and the advertising-subsidised model has reigned supreme.
However, with recession, advertising revenues, always marginal at best, have dried up. Publishers are in a nightmarish situation; they know the print side of their business is struggling, they know punters want their news online, but they can't see how to make it pay. In desperation others may follow Murdoch's retreat behind the paywall. Not good news for news addicts. It isn't so much the money, it's the usernames, passwords, subscriptions ... Actually, it is the money. But publishers need a profit. Information might want to be free – but food and housing isn't. So is there another way? Some model that brings in more than advertising, but doesn't exclude casual visitors, either by cost or inconvenience? Well yes – an idea that won't go away: micropayments.
The basic concept of micropayments is that you charge at a price that doesn't deter consumers at all, but will aggregate enough profit, via mass sales, to sustain a business. Classical micropayment theory (yes, there is a classical and neo theory – probably a superstring version too) states that payments should be of the order of 1/1000 of a US cent. A cent would be the minimum now. Fans claim this is beneath the mental threshold at which resistance to a purchase sets in. Critics divide into two camps – those who feel it's a dumb idea, and those who feel it's evil. Dumb because similar schemes have failed in the past. Evil because it swipes your money under the radar, and an effective scheme could easily expand to diminish the entire web by fencing off vast quantities of content. The dumb argument can be countered – we can implement a scheme today that beats previous implementations hands down – I'll explain how in a moment. I pretty much accept the evil argument, but it's the lesser of several evils – the main one being that journalism goes down the pan unless we find a way to fund mainstream media online.
So, how could it work? Step forward Google. Many of you will be familiar with Google Ads – perhaps not with how the system works. Basically, you sign up, create a bundle of code using their site tools, wrap it into your own pages and presto, ads appear, and when your visitors click on those ads, you get paid. Not immediately. Payments – tiny payments – are tracked and added up. To reduce payment transaction costs, you're paid one sum, once a month. The code has unique identifiers, the code is smart enough to tell Google to look at your pages, providing content-targeted ads. The database in the background keeps track. You just watch the money roll in. The transfer potential of this technology to a micropayments scenario is clear: individuals would sign up with Google, deposit funds. They'd have a unique ID attached to them at that point – an encrypted cookie stored on whichever PC they happen to log in with. When they visit a site with GoogleDosh embedded they're allowed in, a fraction of a penny is switched to the content provider's account for every item they read – if visitors aren't GoogleDosh members, they're re-routed, perhaps, to a précis, or a sign-up form, or even to a limited trial. The key difference from other micropayment schemes is scale – and that's what beats individual site subscriptions too – sign up with one scheme, and you get access to thousands of sites. That's my theory, at least. It's technically simple – an easy step if publishers accept a single standard, and the success of Google Ads suggests they will. Publishers win, consumers win long-term by supporting content providers, and in the short term, if good sense among sellers prevails, they get a bargain: spending pennies a day for all the content they need. Not just news of course – anything could be paid for in the same way.
Googlephobics will no doubt hold their hands up in horror. Tough. This needs a big player – there are two: Google and Microsoft. Of the two, Google already has the infrastructure and the reputation for managing situations like this. Not only that, but they're touted as news content's No 1 enemy, via GoogleNews. They "owe" the press one. Yes, there are issues. Privacy. Exclusion, perhaps. And further entrenching a near-monopoly position. But these can be countered, technically and economically – and nothing stops parallel schemes running, once the concept is established. The fact is that in the boom years micropayments looked like a lot of fuss, and a leap into the unknown. I get the impression publishers' pride got in the way of being asked to sell for pennies. But now the boom is over, micropayments aren't an option – they may be the only way forward.
Source: Guardian.co.uk
Ever since Rupert Murdoch announced plans to put his digital titles behind a paywall, claiming the "free" web was dead, the rest of the media have either pooh-poohed his proposals, or nervously wondered if they should do likewise.
A great deal of online content is profitably charged for – notably music and porn – but news struggles. With the exception of some high-value material from publications like the Wall Street Journal, news doesn't seem able to turn a buck. Experiments in charging have largely failed – and the advertising-subsidised model has reigned supreme.
However, with recession, advertising revenues, always marginal at best, have dried up. Publishers are in a nightmarish situation; they know the print side of their business is struggling, they know punters want their news online, but they can't see how to make it pay. In desperation others may follow Murdoch's retreat behind the paywall. Not good news for news addicts. It isn't so much the money, it's the usernames, passwords, subscriptions ... Actually, it is the money. But publishers need a profit. Information might want to be free – but food and housing isn't. So is there another way? Some model that brings in more than advertising, but doesn't exclude casual visitors, either by cost or inconvenience? Well yes – an idea that won't go away: micropayments.
The basic concept of micropayments is that you charge at a price that doesn't deter consumers at all, but will aggregate enough profit, via mass sales, to sustain a business. Classical micropayment theory (yes, there is a classical and neo theory – probably a superstring version too) states that payments should be of the order of 1/1000 of a US cent. A cent would be the minimum now. Fans claim this is beneath the mental threshold at which resistance to a purchase sets in. Critics divide into two camps – those who feel it's a dumb idea, and those who feel it's evil. Dumb because similar schemes have failed in the past. Evil because it swipes your money under the radar, and an effective scheme could easily expand to diminish the entire web by fencing off vast quantities of content. The dumb argument can be countered – we can implement a scheme today that beats previous implementations hands down – I'll explain how in a moment. I pretty much accept the evil argument, but it's the lesser of several evils – the main one being that journalism goes down the pan unless we find a way to fund mainstream media online.
So, how could it work? Step forward Google. Many of you will be familiar with Google Ads – perhaps not with how the system works. Basically, you sign up, create a bundle of code using their site tools, wrap it into your own pages and presto, ads appear, and when your visitors click on those ads, you get paid. Not immediately. Payments – tiny payments – are tracked and added up. To reduce payment transaction costs, you're paid one sum, once a month. The code has unique identifiers, the code is smart enough to tell Google to look at your pages, providing content-targeted ads. The database in the background keeps track. You just watch the money roll in. The transfer potential of this technology to a micropayments scenario is clear: individuals would sign up with Google, deposit funds. They'd have a unique ID attached to them at that point – an encrypted cookie stored on whichever PC they happen to log in with. When they visit a site with GoogleDosh embedded they're allowed in, a fraction of a penny is switched to the content provider's account for every item they read – if visitors aren't GoogleDosh members, they're re-routed, perhaps, to a précis, or a sign-up form, or even to a limited trial. The key difference from other micropayment schemes is scale – and that's what beats individual site subscriptions too – sign up with one scheme, and you get access to thousands of sites. That's my theory, at least. It's technically simple – an easy step if publishers accept a single standard, and the success of Google Ads suggests they will. Publishers win, consumers win long-term by supporting content providers, and in the short term, if good sense among sellers prevails, they get a bargain: spending pennies a day for all the content they need. Not just news of course – anything could be paid for in the same way.
Googlephobics will no doubt hold their hands up in horror. Tough. This needs a big player – there are two: Google and Microsoft. Of the two, Google already has the infrastructure and the reputation for managing situations like this. Not only that, but they're touted as news content's No 1 enemy, via GoogleNews. They "owe" the press one. Yes, there are issues. Privacy. Exclusion, perhaps. And further entrenching a near-monopoly position. But these can be countered, technically and economically – and nothing stops parallel schemes running, once the concept is established. The fact is that in the boom years micropayments looked like a lot of fuss, and a leap into the unknown. I get the impression publishers' pride got in the way of being asked to sell for pennies. But now the boom is over, micropayments aren't an option – they may be the only way forward.
Source: Guardian.co.uk
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
