Get with the news
Get with the news.
An interesting take:
“Stop looking at the Web as merely a display opportunity and not a way to interact. That does not create a new business model, it just shifts one that isn’t growing and is outdated. The reason sites like Google are stealing advertisers from daily newspapers is not because Google has more eyeballs. Its’s because Google used the interactivity of the Web to deliver a new, better way to advertise,” says Sarah Lacy.
If you are in print media and done nothing to update you strategies you need to rethink your business model using expert digtal PR. Merely putting your content online is hardly enough.
It appears that revenue for ad supported, text-based news content is not coming back at all. At least not in the same formats it was in previously. That party is over and the only answer is to retool and design for a connected world.
We now live in an open information society where anyone can produce content. It seems no longer special or unique to be organised around making text-based content when we’re all organised around it.
Free media is the result and the future generations, especially, are trained to get this. Digital publications that are open/free are going to run with stories and content, whether original or published elsewhere. So even if someone is profiting from control (such as a wlled garden) many are going to profit from it regardless of that, the information is worth spreading.
Some argue that the reality is an attention economy. Aggregate attention is finite, yet companies and even people are getting more aggressive, creative and active in their content marketing. Which I guess in the process means stealing time and attention from pure media players.
At the start of selling ads online, most media set a price points for ads far lower than print, training most to expect online ads to be cheaper to purchase. Yet what they should have been doing all along is treating digital as the master copy.
So there you have, even digital advertising and media have already gone through multiple phases of maturation. And did so without a nod to the past. The split seemed to happen years ago with entrepreneurs developing systems seeking relevancy to consumers through things like contextual and search advertising on the sales side and SEO and social media on the media side. Those media entities which retooled are succeeding, however those who cling to the past are already obsolete.
When we can target ultra-specific groups, witness conversions, have accountability for our spends and the ability to refine campaigns – all in real-time – it seems archaic to advertise with print media. The dusty old brands of yesterday may still be throwing money into print to reach CPM goals but I question when we reach a tipping point globally of tech savvy CMOs who see the absurdity of it. That type of advertising is a failure.
Simply put, the argument stands that there is no relevance of printed news in a digital society. Books are not going away, but some compare printed newspapers to the disappearance of the milkman, saying that within our lifetimes they will become extinct.
Maybe so, but I still enjoy a Sunday afternoon in the park with a copy of The Sunday Times inhand.
