“Hybrid media” (newspapers) an acquired taste for the advertising community

On occasion, I'm invited to speak to the advertising community on behalf of newspapers about our industry's view of the emerging media ecosystem. Tomorrow, my audience is the Union of Belgian Advertisers in Brussels.

In the course of my research for this speech, I ran across an interesting web site called the “Print Power,” operated collaboratively among the major print industry players in Europe.

It's here where I found the advertising industry's phrase to describe the Industry Formerly Known As Newspapers: “hybrid media.”

“The new phase of planning media has to deal with hybrid media,” according to a recent posting by Print Power editors. “Media that are not any longer what they seem to be. We have seen newspapers migrating to the internet, sometimes even in the same layout as the printed version. But more spectacular is the integration of other media 'genes' like the use of e-ink in the anniversary issue of Esquire in 2008. ...[more]

Marketing challenge: how to close the online value gap between publishers and consumers

U.S. newspaper publishers are sharply disconnected from how consumers perceive their newspapers' brands in the online space. The marketing challenge for newspapers is how to close that gap and to evolve positive perceptions of newspaper web sites into irreplaceable ones for consumers.

This is my alternative “lead” to yesterday's story emanating from suburban Washington, D.C., where the American Press Institute (API) hosted the presentation of a survey by Belden Interactive and ITZ Publishing regarding online revenue possibilities. (Download the full PowerPoint presentation here.)

The survey was designed to show the latest thinking by U.S. newspaper companies regarding online revenue possibilities.

DISCONNECT: PUBLISHERS AND CONSUMERS

Not entirely unexpected, newspaper publishers have a much higher opinion of themselves than their consuming publics.

What the API survey cleverly included was Belden Interactive data on how consumers see newspaper web sites alongside what publishers thought their consumers would say about their ...[more]

To see tomorrow’s hybrid business models, segment usage and passion

Reading through background materials on the online paid content debate in today's media industry, I'm struck by the sledgehammer approach by our industry's smartest people. Too often, the debate is between “everything must be free” and “everything must be paid.”

An industry that has invested in marketing and research would know better.

We're not in one of those industries.

There are basic marketing premises about “value of content” that must be addressed – and I'm confident the major companies are already dancing around this.

The core marketing principle is audience segmentation. Probably a bit less about lifestyle and geography and a bit more about usage and passion.

“Light” users of web sites, like “light” users of print newspapers, have questionable commercial value that we tend to lump together in glorious, but misleading, “averages.”

According to a survey by the Center for Digital Future at the University of Southern California (USC), heavy internet users spent ...[more]

Postcard from India: circulation pricing and the Digital Revolution

From the outside looking in, the Indian newspaper industry looks like the envy of the publishing world with its favourable demographic trends, an aspirational consumer market hungry for news, and advertisers falling over themselves to feed it. These conditions have encouraged confidence in newspaper publishers – especially this decade – creating expansionary visions for the 20+ companies that dominate.

When I began visiting India five years ago, there was a curious disconnection from the rest of the world. Digital revolutions occurred outside of India's cocoon. Talks of faltering relationships between publishers and advertisers didn't happen in India. The “death of print” was negative talk by Americans or Europeans.

Then, the Great Recession hit.

Indian publishers today confess they had never seen revenue declines – not in their careers, not in their lifetimes. U.S. publishers staring at 29% advertising declines may laugh, but break-even growth can be tough if you're ...[more]