I read Lucia Moses’ article “Panel: Uphill Battle for Traditional Media” and the gist of the conversation is not new:
Advertisers to Publishers — Show us the metrics! Build a new model for measuring audiences and we’ll show you the money.
It’s true, as Moses points out, that traditional media are valued for quality content. However, the problem I see is that people are beginning to realize that quality content lives on the web as well. Content by professional journalists and experts in field are easily accessible. News breaks faster online and journalists follow stories longer than a 10 o’clock sound bite permits. Links expand the information flow right at the reader’s fingertips instantly, requiring less effort on the part of the reader to follow a topic online than it does in print.
And print can’t target its audience definitively. So, shouldn’t publishers be tripping over themselves to follow its advertising dollars online? If advertisers are going digital because that is where they can find and target their audience, then don’t publishers want to find a way to continue to be the matchmaker between advertiser and consumer? Obviously they do, but why is it we haven’t come up with a revenue model that works as efficiently as the old print advertising model? Was it efficient? It certainly seemed to help fund media operations, whereas now some newspapers, for example, are banking on a non-profit or Venture Capitalist business models for success...making the journalism profession truly a public service. Not to mention some also rely on community involvement in order to continue providing quality content, for free.
Will there be a tipping point somewhere in the timeline of publishing’s future at which point it will be too late for publishers to attract the lion-share of advertising dollars? Advertisers are already using alternative means to sell; they’re quickly adapting to new media and by the time publishers catch up, will the new business model be too little too late in recapturing their ad dollars?
In the article Mark Ford said that e-reader devices will transform how publications reach audiences. But, why does anyone have to purchase a dedicated digital reading device if content can already be found online via computer or mobile phones with web access? Why does one need a dedicated reader to download collections of magazines or newspapers if one can get content aggregated online, updates delivered in tweets and feeds posted in social networking communities? Most pressing is the question of distributing digital readers. It poses an economic barrier to entry for those of us who can’t afford to pay more than an old fashioned cup of joe or fancy frappuccino for newspaper and magazine content. E-readers will certainly transform publishers reach audiences. And economic factors will determine which echelon of technology audiences will have access to, in turn further quantifying who advertisers are reaching with any given platform.
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