Change was in the air. The print business model has been superseded, said Tim Brooks. There was no possibility of ever returning to “business as usual” echoed Stevie Spring. And we are going to have to continue to change rapidly and act quickly and decisively, according to James Hanbury. And were they depressed? No, not a bit. Watchful and wary yes, but hugely energised by the opportunities thrown up by new publishing models.
Tim Brooks defied anyone present to show him one single trend that indicated that print was the future. No one did. It would not die; like the Regent’s Canal outside his office, once part of a mighty and essential distribution system, but superseded in the 19th century by rail, print would continue to have its place, but it would, he said, be an ever smaller part of the media eco-system. The reason, simply, was that digital provided a much more efficient means of distributing information - more instantly, more broadly, more internationally than print, said Spring.
Agility, closeness to and understanding of the customer, both reader and advertiser, and new skill sets were all essential requirements. And, whilst the costs of distribution might have come down, said Stevie Spring, the demands of resource-hungry 24/7, multi-media publishing had forced the costs of production up.
The power of infinity
The pressures of the new publishing age could be summed up in one word: infinity. Our competitive set, once tidy and defined, now includes the gazillion bloggers, vanity publishers and other commercial operations now crowding our space. These new rivals (not all them rubbish, said Spring) are grabbing a slice of our readers’ time (the most precious commodity of all), and also loading yet more advertising inventory into the pot.
Moreover, the nature of digital has increased the direct sales opportunities for our advertising base, some of whom have been looking to cut us out of the loop. James Hanbury, for one, welcomed the competition. Traditional publishers could learn from them and some advertisers, where they chose to market direct, have found that “it’s not as easy as it looks” and come back to the fold, more appreciative of our efforts than before.
One of the implications of infinite supply is the problem it presents for charging, both in terms of getting a good price for advertising and for content.
Charging for content
Undoubtedly one of the talking points of 2010, it was soon clear that it is impossible to generalise across the publishing industry. Niche providers, be they B2B specialists like Incisive, or newspapers like the FT or WSJ have long charged for specialist information. For James Hanbury, the issues are not whether his customers will pay for it, but rather, pricing and payment mechanisms.
For purveyors of general news though, like the Guardian and the Times, the issues are different. Tim Brooks is quick to say that the Guardian has no ideological view on paywalls, and if Rupert Murdoch manages to successfully erect one, he is prepared to be “very rapidly humble”. He just does not think that will happen, because the “business DNA of the web” dictates that people do not expect to pay for news on the web. Mobile, on the other hand is different, and there the signs are that users are prepared to pay. The Guardian app, priced at £2.99, is proving very successful, and this despite the fact that the very same information is available for free on the iPhone’s internet browser. Mobile users seem happy to pay for utility.
The same applies for the rapidly emerging eReader market. As Tim Brooks says, people buying eReaders know that they will need to purchase content to go on them. They are prepared to do this, and that has to be good news for “everyone in this room”.
On the subject of preparedness to pay, or at least to pay a “reasonable price”, online advertising was seen as an area needing particular attention. The almost infinite inventory has lead to ever decreasing ad yields, trending remorselessly to zero, said Stevie Spring, who raised the spectre of ‘freemium’ advertising.
The solution is twofold; engage in a debate about the relative value of an eyeball in different settings and to push for differentiated pricing on the basis of it; although the panel was not confident that this argument would make much headway in the face of massive over-supply. Secondly, it is to work with commercial partners to come up with innovative, bespoke commercial solutions. And here the panel agreed there was real potential. As Tim Brooks said, publishers have a considerable advantage in that “what we do is inherently interesting”, in a way that sofa retailing or cereal manufacturing is not. Our commercial partners, he continues, want to borrow that engagement to add lustre to their often “dull” products.
Whilst the platform has changed, or at least grown in number, old publishing and marketing precepts still apply. Getting close to your customers, really understanding their needs, and then meeting them might be “old hat”, said James Hanbury, they still hold true. The difference is that the platform that has served us so well for two centuries and more is no longer the only show in town and we all need to adapt to master the new routes to market.
