Publishers dug the banner hole. Time to dig themselves out.

Photo Credit:http://www.flickr.com/photos/sofiakatariina/1593416193/

About a thousand of us watched a digital ad presentation recently, giant screen looming behind the speaker featuring that day’s Yahoo! home page.  “Who was the advertiser on that page?” the speaker asked as the slide faded a minute later.  Dead silence.  Nobody had noticed.

Whose fault is that?

I’ve heard [...]

May 19th, 2010 | Tags: , | Category: Brand-Building in Digital, More Intrusive Advertising, No Such Thing As Free, Publishers | Leave a comment

Not dead yet: too early to give up on an ad-supported web content model

(CW Network announces they’ll double their online ad load)

At the OMMA Global conference in San Francisco last week I saw a panel debate the “free vs paid” content model for big media.  The platform gave voice to a growing chorus singing the death of an ad-supported online content model.

But the conclusion [...]

March 26th, 2010 | Tags: , , | Category: More Intrusive Advertising, No Such Thing As Free, Publishers, TV Online, cable | Leave a comment

Newspapers and publishers should exit the distribution business

Before digital, newspapers were in two businesses:  content creation (news) and distribution (paper).

Maybe now would be a good time to consider exiting the distribution business.

This would have been impossible to imagine in print.  But in digital, it’s pretty simple.

The current model is something like this:  write a bunch of stories, put them on [...]

March 9th, 2010 | Tags: , , , | Category: Newspaper, Paid Content, Publishers | Leave a comment

The New York Times vs Penguin Books in digital: looks like youth wins round one.

Considering two very different responses to the opportunities digital presents publishers, the disruption in our midst may reshuffle the power, popularity and, possibly, the very presence, of some of our most cherished media brands and institutions.

Imagine your partner has fallen deeply in love with two or three of your most prominent, defining traits.  [...]

March 4th, 2010 | Tags: , , | Category: Newspaper, Publishers, Tablet | Leave a comment

The iPad won’t save publishers, or anyone else

Sorry.

Like Benjamin Franklin practically said:  Apple helps people who help themselves.  (They crush people who don’t, by the way.)

All the talk of iPad-as-savior reminds me of those commercials promising weight loss without proper diet and exercise.  It’s a fantasy.

The iPad isn’t a pill publishers can take and, presto, become attractive.  It’s going to [...]

February 4th, 2010 | Tags: , | Category: Magazine, Newspaper, Publishers | One comment