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The Boston Consulting Group has entered the paid content debate this month with a valuable contribution. It’s “Willingness to pay for news online” report presents key findings from an international survey.
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Emerging Media
Emerging Media
: 3rd International Tablet & E-Reading Conference
In 2010: You might be interested in...
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Mobile Media Day 2010: Echoes from the conference
The 85 participants of Mobile Media Day shared best practices on mobile marketing and were, naturally, curious to learn more about the iPad strategies already launched or under development.
The new mobile Apple iAd advertising network was also a topic of discussion for an audience that is interested in tapping into mobile advertising in order to monetize mobile platforms.
Soon after the conference, Apple announced that it had already secured some 60 million ad dollars for the iAd launch in July.
Should iAd be considered as a danger for publishers? asked Stig Nordqvist, Group director Emerging Digital Platforms and business Development WAN-IFRA and chairman of the MMD conference?
• For Florian Gmeinwieser, managing director of the German advertising agency, Plan.Net Media, "iAd will allow advertisers to reach attractive demographic target audiences" but he also told the audience that, as an advertising agency, he was against the technology and commercial rules that Apple was introducing with iAd.
• A concern that Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob formulated on June 9 :"Apple proposed new developer terms that, if enforced as written, would prohibit app developers from using AdMob and Google’s advertising solutions on the iPhone. These advertising-related terms target both companies with competitive mobile technologies (such as Google) as well as any company whose primary business is not serving mobile ads. This change threatens to decrease – or even eliminate – revenue that helps to support tens of thousands of developers. The terms hurt both large and small developers by severely limiting their choice of how best to make money. And because advertising funds a huge number of free and low cost apps, these terms are bad for consumers as well".
The Apple voice
Many clever iPhone applications were presented at MMD this year and Stig Nordqvist took the occasion to share with the participants a recent discussion with Paul Burford, Apple Technical Evangelist (held within the framework of the eRev executive programme):
- "Among things people often forget are very basic elements: design a gorgeous app icon for the iPhone and register properly the application" advices Stig Nordqvist.
- “One of the pieces of advice that Apple often provides regarding the development of applications is to start with the smallest amount of functionality possible but to do them well (does it help deliver the solution, is it fun?). Then do an update that does a little bit more. Crucial to designing an app is to have a clear idea of its purpose: a serious app should provide a lots of content to navigate though and be very consumption-oriented; a utility apps (e.g. financial news) should be graphically rich, single screen and simple navigation and if you want to be in the entertainment category it should be graphically rich but mainly suitable for interaction. You need to stay away from a development process based on the features you want to include in the app and adopt a more proven formula: what is your differentiator; your solution and for which audience? People love freshness and improvements and when you push out an update you get a chance to tell users about what it does. Think of having an in-app purchase to generate incremental revenue for impulse purchases but consider free content in your in-app store as it will draw the customer’s attention”.
Times zones and Simplexity
Among the tips given by Philipp Sugai, director Mobile Consumer Lab, International University of Japan, two greatly enlivened the discussions of the mobile experts present at the conference. The first proposed defining time zones as the basis for designing services and applications: “Our lives today have become fast-paced and largely calendar-driven. We hustle between appointments and meetings, home and work, work and play but there are always “In-Between Times” as we move from one thing to the next. By definition, the content and services we use during these bursts must be concise, easy to access and understand, and easy to drop and pick up again later. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the “Golden time” zone, characterised by longer term, when the most “dedicated” mobile use occurs. In this time zone, content and services can have more depth and breadth. From the consumer’s perspective, depending on time constraints and user needs, in-between or golden time can occur at exactly the same place and time of day. While mobile consumers appreciate “in-between” content and services, what is geared for “golden time” should take priority”. Last but not least, another major principle developed by him is that of Simplexity: “The average mobile user is not a geek. Mobile Simplexity should combine technology, integrated services, intelligent analysis (preference, behaviour-based) and an easy-to-use interface driven by user needs and capabilities”.
Some slides, reflecting a small part of what has been discussed this year at Mobile Media Day...
Edipresse uses all the mobile possibilites and Marc Lamarche head of mobile services at Edipresse has put the focus on mobile-based advertising in his presentation. “Most of our contents are on free access, with the exception of two niche products. And we will keep it that way because we believe in the mobile advertising potential”.
- Niche applications might have a limited reach but they provide the targeted audience mobile advertisers are looking for. Two examples given at MMD. Femina from Edipresse and AutoPilot from Gannett/USA Today
- According to Matt Jones, vice-president Mobile Strategy & Operations Gannett Digital/USA advertisers recognize the efficiency of vertical applications: "As an example, the 40000 regular users of our AutoPilot application are an attractive target for some of our advertisers".
Matt Jones described in depth at MMD the recent launch and the business model of the iPad USA Today application. Several weeks after the launch of this iPad application in the U.S.A., it already registered some 375,000 downloads.
"Our goal is to increase our audience and the time people spend in the environment of our brand. This is not about using another platform".
RCS group, publisher of Corriere Della Sera and Gazzetta Dello Sport offers the possibility to subscribe to the contents of its daily newspapers on the iPhone, though also via the ovi boutique (Nokia), Blackberry, Vodafone, Samsung applications. And Federico Vittadello, head of mobile activities is satisfied with the first results of his pay-for offerings launched this year.
But the iPad is something else thinks Federico Vittadello and he explains why in the slide below:
On the Blog
Content monetisation: Paid content: BCG offers a much-documented contribution
Without a shred of doubt, 2009 has been the year of the e-reading device, and new models will come out quickly next year. But computer manufacturers are trying hard to shift consumer attention to the tablet PC.
Apple’s tablet is still a rumor, as is Microsoft’s in-process "tablet-booklet" Courier (in the "late prototype" stage of development, according to the CNET gadget blog). But ICD has released concrete information on its Vega Tablet, which will run Android 2.0:
CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Las Vegas, the world's largest consumer technology trade show is starting today (7 January). Two new e-reading devices, the Skiff Reader and the QUE proReader, developed with the press industry in mind, will be launched at the event. And it comes as no surprise that Amazon has chosen this very same week to announce that its Kindle DX (also designed for the press!) was ready for a worldwide shipment.
Intensifying Smartphone Competition: Google's answer is "Superphone"
On January 5, 2010, Google announced its Nexus One wireless handsets powered by Android 2.1, only slightly more than a year after the announcement of the first Android-powered phone, HTC's G1. The phone is sold by Google and manufactured by HTC.
e-reading devices: Wrap up CES Las Vegas 2010
The number of announcements in the e-reader area confirms, should that be necessary, that the race is now on between all major electronics manufacturers.
Mobile Web usage in 2009: Report: Accelerating rise of mobile web consumption
Every month Quantcast measures more than 200 billion requests for Internet content. A growing portion of these requests originates from networked mobile devices. The boundary between mobile and PC (e.g the future tablets) is blurring, and Quantcast expects that it will push ‘web access on the go’ to new levels in 2010.
Above, mobile share of pageviews by continent
Mobile strategy: Charging for news apps: the Independent.ie experience
Independent.ie is the first Irish national newspaper publisher to launch an iPhone app on 22 October 2009. It also belongs to the the first wave of publishers worldwide to successfully charge for news apps.
In this interview, Patrick Lenehan, Chief Technology Officer for the digital business of Independent News and Media in Ireland, explains the launch process and customer feedback.
“I'm not going to talk about these black times, but instead about opportunities;” with these words Stig Nordqvist, Executive Director,Emerging Digital Platforms and Business Development for WAN-IFRA kicked off Beyond the Printed Word in Barcelona 2009.
Digital distribution: Top players create a common e-reading platform in Japan
Instead of waiting for the Japanese launch of Apple's iPad, Sony, Toppan Printing, KDDI Corporation, and the Asahi Shimbun have announced they will establish a joint venture to develop an eBook distribution company that will build and manage a common distribution platform for books, comics, magazines and newspapers for the Japanese market. And the door is opened for other companies.
Mariam Mammen Mathew, CEO of Manorama Online painted an altogether brighter picture drawn from the other side of the world. Being from India “best known for its technology boom and the film Slumdog Millionnaire”, Mathew sketched a market many in the room could only dream of; 1.2 billion citizens, 60,000 publications, more than 4,000 daily newspapers selling 100 million copies and the only market where newspaper circulation is rising– the numbers were staggering.
Wolfgang Blau, editor in chief of Zeit Online in Germany came to talk about user-centric design but as he quickly pointed out “all design should be user centred”. 
“We like to call ourselves the newspaper of a new generation; faster, shorter, clearer” explained Tomislav Klaric, MD of Croatia's 24sata MMM brand (“MMM stands for anything, anytime, everywhere”), a hybrid of website, paid editions and a free afternoon edition.
Soitu.es closed two weeks ago so when its director, Gumersindo Lafuente, stepped up to talk about the future it was as the head of 'an exquisite corpse' rather than a live online paper. That certainly didn't take away from his message however, as he explained the importance of new ways of working for journalists who “must understand how technology works so that technologists don't end up setting the agenda.
The deal of the summer is undeniably the agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo! It is their common rival, Google, that brought about this relationship between two unlikely partners. If it results in a (minor) re-shuffling of the cards in the competition between search engines, its impact will be concentrated mainly in the American market. The members of the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium hope that in the future all Yahoo!’s efforts will focus on an area that is an exception to the deal: display advertising.
ADGA, The Financial Times' effort to calculate the net number of readers that access daily its content (online and in print), answers one of the most frequently questions asked by the sales team of any newspaper: how many people will see my ad today? Anita Hague, global research director at the FT, explains.
While Internet users are spending more and more of their time with social networks, advertising spend continues to be directed towards more traditional web uses. What are the reasons for this paradox? Jean-Nicolas Reyt analyses the situation*.
It might be that Apple just made life easier for publishers pondering if they should start developing for smaller-sized devices.
Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs commented during the company’s quarterly earnings call yesterday (Monday 18) that he did not believe on an “avalanche of tablets” about to enter the market: “It appears to be just a handful of credible entrants, not exactly an avalanche”.
Amazon has announced new revenue-sharing terms for magazines and newspapers wishing to join the Kindle platform. Publishers will keep 70 percent of the retail price (minus delivery costs) of each publication sold.
Google, who has been aggregating news from newspaper websites for a long time without providing remuneration to the publishers, have now reached a revenue sharing agreement with 36 newspapers and magazines.
An example of the Fast Flip application for the Washington Post…and the advertising possibility on the right
Anders Stenbäck, Business Development Manager at Hesingin Sanomat of Finland explained the secrets of making money from hyperlocal, in this case with a mapping/directory product called My Own City which answers such questions as where to find a good restaurant/plumber/tailor/hairdresser etc.
Rupert Murdoch is making news this week, having announced that henceforth - at least by summer 2010, all of his publications and television news channels will charge for web content. In May, said the Fiancial Times (www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f6edc2c-821f-11de-9c5e-00144feabdc0.html) his company had planned to test pay models at its stronger properties.
Few knew what to expect when Inmaculada Martinez of Stradbroke Advisors took to the stage to talk about 'Positive Deviants and the Agents of Change' but what followed was a lively canter through media predictions and Generation Y – the generation that grew up with digital and which in 2010 will outnumber the baby boomers. 90 per cent of them have joined a social network and with that social media has overtaken porn as the number one activity online.
Philippe Jannet, CEO of Le Monde Interactif talked about that paper's mobile experience. Le Monde already has a paid for model online with a subscription scheme that sees some content published for free and other services, including the right to contribute UGC charged for. Jannet mused on the idea of charging users to write for the paper as he didn't invent the model but it works and ads sell for more on subscriber pages than free ones.
Ramón Salaverría is one of the most influential Spaniards in the Internet area (according to El Mundo yearly ranking). He will be the co-chairman of the 17th WAN-IFRA digital publishing conference Beyond 2009 (Barcelona, November 5 and 6).
Adobe Systems Incorporated and Omniture, Inc. announced that the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for Adobe to acquire Omniture in a transaction valued at approximately $1.8 billion. The company is now in good position to provide a complete range of tools for Self-Service Advertising portals.
International publishing group Axel Springer and Swiss-based media agency PubliGroupe together purchased a 50.1 percent stake in Digital Window Ltd (founded in 2000). The company is one of the leading affiliate networks in Great Britain, the biggest European market for performance-based online marketing. Plans would be to expand the Digital Window concept to other European countries.
World Press Trends: World Newspaper Congress: Digital ad revenues to remain miniscule
At no time in the foreseeable future will digital advertising revenues replace those
lost to print, making the search for new business models including paid-for online access for news a pressing concern for the news publishing industry, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) said in its annual world press trends update.
“We are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code” said Apple in a recent statement. Designers can now develop apps with Flash and compile them into a native iOS format. Apple also published for the first time its App Store Review Guidelines to help developers understand how they review submitted apps.
In the Wiki
IFRA Expo 2009 Interview: Newspaper advertisers can now create, target and measure their interactive campaigns
AdLizard is well known at IFRA Expo and in the newspaper industry for its self-service print advertising technologies. The company has expanded its print platform by offering a web advertising solution to help newspaper publishers and ad networks capture small to medium sized business (SMB advertisers). Danny Gruber presents this new technology, “AdLizard for Web”*, which will be launched at IFRA Expo.
BEYOND 2009: Extending reach and revenues via multimedia
Mariam M. Mathew, chief operating officer, Manorama Online, Malayala Manorama, will serve as co-chair of this year’s Beyond 2009, the 17th World Digital Publishing Conference in Barcelona on 5 and 6 November.
Русский
Augmented Reality: Interview with Christine Perey
Christine Perey has her own company, PEREY Research & Consulting (www.perey.com), that is focusing on emerging technologies since 1991. One of her areas of expertise is Mobile Augmented Reality.
Urs Gossweiler, publisher of Jungfrau Zeitung, thinks LOCAL is the key for the future of the newspapers. The search engine launched by the Swiss company for its 45.000 inhabitants community has been welcomed by readers and advertisers.
Theo Huibers is the managing partner of Thaesis (www.linkedin.com/in/theohuibers) and a professor and researcher in search technologies at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He works or has worked for several Dutch and German publishing companies. In parallel he is also developing a search engine specifically dedicated to kids: a four-million euros research project that can be followed on this web site: http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/puppyir/
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