Results matching “is a consumer product”

From dock connectors to web analytics to guessing the name of this elusive gadget, all speculation will reach its pinnacle when Apple's widely anticipated tablet is finally unveiled at an event in San Francisco Wednesday.

The much-hyped iSlate (the name of the actual device has not been confirmed) is rumored to have a sleek 10-inch color display and Wi-Fi capabilities allowing newspapers, magazines, and book publishers to deliver their products with an eye-catching design.
 

The buzz keeps growing and growing around tablets - electronic devices with a touch-screen interface, e-reader capabilities, as well as web browsing among others.

Rumors about Apple's tablet, or the iSlate, as it is now being called, have been gaining momentum as the elusive and innovative device that is supposed to look like a bigger version of Apple's iPhone, prepares to launch early this year.

Several other big high-tech players have also lined up to present their own versions of the slate. Just this last Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled the Hewlett-Packard yet to be named tablet at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Hailed as a strategy opposite of raising paywalls, Kent News has released a free iPhone app with a battery of features, some new, some not so new. See below for the promo video of its features. 

Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp and Time Inc. have announced plans to jointly develop an e-reading device/service with publishers interests at heart. Disillusioned with the 30-70 per cent revenue split offered by current market dominator, Amazon's Kindle, the group of publishers have decided to unite in their cause to make the e-reader opportunity more profitable. 

No details on how much each partner will invest in the venture have been released, though according to interim managing director, John Squires, there is enough in the kitty "to give us a good start". Information on staff size has similarly not been made public, nor has a company name been decided upon.

In a recent post on Poynter Online, Paula Morton has looked at the lesson that newspapers could take from the history of their generally trashier, less respected cousin, the tabloid.  

"A tabloid story sells," she writes, "I admit: when I am caught behind a long line at the Publix checkout, I read the headlines of the National Enquirer. "Senator Caught with Hooker!" "Stars with Cellulite!"... shouting from specially designed pedestal racks positioned exactly at eye-level on the checkout counter."

With pressure mounting against Google from newspapers angered by the way it helps readers bypass their paywalls; the search engine giant has agreed to aid publishers by putting a cap on subscription websites.

The cap will limit free access to five articles per day, after which readers will be redirected to a registration page or payment screen. Previously, users have been able to continually view subscription articles for free by entering news websites via Google.

MashLogic is a start-up that is seeking to help publishers increase their traffic by providing consumers with what is essentially a "personalised search tool," as described by John Bryan, vice president of business development. The company is based in San Francisco, funded by investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, and founders of LinkedIn and About.com. It currently has seven employees, but Bryan told the Editors Weblog that it is looking to expand.

What it is: three product variations

MashLogic is planning to operate in three ways, based on the same principle of encouraging people to consume more of the content that they are interested in. First, is the consumer offering, which is in beta and was rolled out a few months ago. A consumer can go to the MashLogic site and download an Internet Explorer or Firefox plug-in, and a MashLogic icon appears in the browser tool bar. Clicking on this gives users a choice of more than 20 sources to select, and the RSS feeds from these sources are read by the MashLogic algorithm. MashLogic then searches each web page that the user visits and underlines key terms for which it can provide extra information from the source feeds. When the user scrolls over one of these terms, a box pops up with additional links from the sources that the user has chosen. If the user wants to read an article, they click on the link and the page opens in a new browser tab.

"So what we're doing," said Bryan, "is providing users with a tool that gives them direct access to relevant content, rather than going to Google or Yahoo, which give you articles loosely associated with the terms you're searching for."

This tool has been available for about four months, though it has not yet been marketed. Bryan said that the company has found that users are spending more time on a site investigating the links that are offered, and that on average, a user will click through to a link offered by the box four times. These facts made Bryan and his colleagues think about ways in which the company could work directly with newspaper and magazines "to address some of the challenges that publishers have been facing."

What they came up with was a second scenario, 'Branded Mash': offering publications a branded pop up box that would contain links only to their own content and that of partners such as Wikipedia or Amazon. For example, visitors to the New York Times might be able to use a branded box which would link to other NYT articles and multimedia content on topics which the reader was looking at, and relevant content from Wikipedia, Twitter and e-commerce sites. The box would also have a search function. All the publisher would have to do is insert a couple of lines of Java script, and the reader would not have to download anything.

A third offering which the company is developing is to take this branded box  and give the user the chance to have this available on any website they looked at. For example, if someone was a big fan of the Guardian, they could choose to have a Guardian pop up box, linking to Guardian content, appear on any page they were looking at. The newspaper would have to insert some script, and would offer the user a link to the MashLogic website from where they could download the tool.

How MashLogic could make money for publishers

So the essential benefit of MashLogic for publishers would be to increase traffic and page views, and therefore CPMs. Using the Branded Mash, a reader would always be just one click away from content on their chosen newspaper or magazine website, even if on a competitor's site "What we've found," said Bryan, "is that if you always get your news from one source that you trust, you might always want to see how that matches up to what else you're hearing." Even using the more basic offering (second scenario) the user would have less temptation to leave the publisher's site and use a search engine, as they could find more articles on many topics within the pop-up box.

Opportunities for e-commerce

As well as increasing CPMs, another way that MashLogic could help publishers raise money is by promoting e-commerce. The pop-up boxes would, where relevant, contain links to e-commerce providers such as Amazon, E-bay, iTunes, TicketMaster and more, and if a user were to buy something then the publisher and MashLogic would receive a cut of the revenue. This is currently the only way that MashLogic itself makes money. What could also be very relevant for publications is to always offer a subscription link somewhere in the box, Bryan said, as 35% of subscriptions are now started online.

Will it make enough money?

"I don't see us as being the sole solution," Bryan said, "I see us as being one of the multiple solutions that publishers will use at different times." And it is, of course, impossible to tell how successful the MashLogic tool would be in terms of increasing traffic. Bryan said that those using the consumer tool are currently spending six to eight minutes longer on sites and accessing three or four pieces of additional information: these figures are impressive but the consumer group is small and likely to include some unusually avid news fans.

Bryan was clear that he does not see any direct competitors to what MashLogic is offering publishers: "nobody is offering a totally branded solution for publishers right now." There are, however, companies which have some comparable ideas. MashLogic's approach is in some ways similar to that of Apture: both offering a pop up box with links to more information, the main difference being that it is the journalist who chooses the key words to link to using Apture. Another start-up which has adopted the idea of a newspaper brand following users around the web is CircLabs, which plans to release a tool called Circulate which would appear as a strip within the browser window and provide links to recommended newspaper content.

As MashLogic's technology is free for publishers to use and could certainly offer the chance to generate additional income and create deeper reader engagement, hopefully promoting brand loyalty, it might well be worth trying. The idea of keeping their readers away from search engines could appeal to many publishers who are frustrated by the amount of money that a company like Google makes without producing its own content.

The buzz surrounding Plastic Logic's highly anticipated e-reader was renewed yesterday with the release of an official name for the device, and more importantly, an official launch date.

QUE (pronounced "Q"), the super-slim, lightweight, wireless e-reader is Plastic Logic's first 'proReader' designed for business professionals and will launch on January 7, 2010 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The Dallas Morning News is reacting to advert losses and declining circulation after five years of cuts by increasing coverage, hiring journalists and raising prices - the 'premium product' approach.

After all the cuts of recent years, "The only other place to go was to the consumer to say, 'If you really want this, we may need you to pay more for it,' " said Jim Moroney, publisher of The News. "It was a little scary. This was not without peril." There has been a recent subscription rate increase of 43%, from $21 to $30, and the good news is that so far this risky tactic has worked; 88% of the newspaper's home delivery subscribers have had a chance to renew, and 90% of them have opted to pay the higher prices, Moroney said.

"For newspapers to successfully pursue a premium pricing strategy, which I think is valid and right, they have to deliver a premium product," said Alan Mutter, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former newspaperman who writes a blog called Reflections of a Newsosaur.

This is exactly what The News has begun to do.

Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos announced on Tuesday that the Kindle 2 would drop $40 in price from $299 to $259 in response to growing competition in the e-reader market. The decision comes amidst speculation that both Apple and Microsoft have plans to create their own devices and recent polls which have revealed that the current price point for e-readers is too high for the average consumer.

A new international Kindle that will allow users to buy books and newspapers wirelessly anywhere in the the world, will also be released on October 19 for $279, reports USA Today. Kindle users abroad previously needed a US Amazon based account and had to transfer their e-books from a computer via USB. "A book that may take two weeks to get shipped internationally in physical form can now be delivered in less than 60 seconds," Bezos told USA Today. The release is targeted at english-speaking expats and travellers and rivals the pricier iRex DR800SG ($399), previously the only e-reader to offer a global wireless network.

E-reader sales in the US have surpassed (albiet low) expectations, and Forrester Research, who previously predicted total sales would reach 2 million in May, has 'upped that projection by 50% to 3 million for 2009, with 30% of 2009 sales occuring in the holiday season of November and December.'

Google is developing a paid online content model involving both subscriptions and micropayments that it is has proposed to the Newspaper Association of America, Nieman Lab reported. Google submitted an eight-page document to the NAA in response to the association's request for content charging solutions (available here).

Google already has an e-commerce platform called Google Checkout and the new system would be an extension of this.

The company outlines its thoughts on paid online content as follows:

Google believes that an open web benefits all users and publishers.  However, "open" need not mean free.  We believe that content on the Internet can thrive supported by multiple business models -- including content available only via subscription. While we believe that advertising will likely remain the main source of revenue for most news content, a paid model can serve as an important source of additional revenue.  In addition, a successful paid content model can enhance advertising opportunities, rather than replace them.

The document outlines Google's assumption that one of the main challenges of paid online content is to "create a simple payment model that is painless for users." It claims that it could use its expertise in e-commerce and consumer products to "help create a successful e-commerce platform for publishers." And it stresses that, given its position in Internet users' lives, it can help publishers to enable users to find the paid content via search.

Key features in Google's vision of a "premium content ecosystem" include:

• • Single sign-on capability for users to access content and manage subscriptions  
• • Ability for publishers to combine subscriptions from different titles together for one price  
• • Ability for publishers to create multiple payment options and easily include/exclude content behind a paywall  
• • Multiple tiers of access to search including 1) snippets only with "subscription" label, 2) access to preview pages and 3) "first click free" access   
• • Advertising systems that offer highly relevant ads for users, such as interest-based advertising

Using the "fast, secure" Google Checkout, consumers can store their payment information in their Google Account and use this to buy products, both digital and physical. Fraud losses are low, the document says, and tens of millions of users and several hundred thousand merchants are already registered.

Subscriptions and micropayment options

Checkout can already offer subscription payments, and the document promises that the currently "fairly rudimentary" process could be improved to be "more relevant for news and media companies." Micropayments are "in the early planning stages" but "will be a payment vehicle available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year." The document stresses that merchant integration will be "extremely simple."

"Google believes that there is real power and benefit to publishers in providing these sorts of broad, multi-publication access passes."

The Google document expresses a preference for subscriptions over micropayments, and the company seems particularly keen on bundled packages of content: "Google believes that there is real power and benefit to publishers in providing these sorts of broad, multi-publication access passes." It notes that for such packages, publishers "will receive a revenue disbursement that is proportional to the usage of their content in the package." It is not clear whether this would be allocated per article clicked upon or depending on time spent on each site, however, and this has the potential to be an area of contention amongst publishers involved. Such packages do offer definitive benefits to the consumer, however, allowing users to move freely between publications, as they do now.

With regards to micropayments, the document states that "we do not believe it will be the norm for accessing content." However, it suggests that they could be useful for readers who want to buy single articles that are not included in their subscription, the price of which would be added to their monthly bill. It also proposes a pre-paid service.

Advertising

Continuing to promote advertising is an integral part of Google's proposal and the document states that "we believe the increased advertising opportunities will likely exceed total revenue from subscriptions." The platform would allow ads to be sold in three different ways: "directly by publishers, sold as part of the Google Content Network, or sold via multiple ad networks through our ad exchange." Advertising could be targeted, based on voluntary data from individual registration information.

Search

The document notes the ways that Google's search engine currently makes paid content discoverable: allowing either a preview to appear in search results if the searcher is not a subscriber, or by allowing one article free via search (the tactic the Wall Street Journal currently takes). "Search engines should know what content a user has access to," the document states, and "assuming the user has access rights, the full content should be available and exposed within 1 click from the search results page." The content to which a user does not have access would be displayed with a price.

Further distribution

The document suggests that Google News could also license and host further content from interested publishers, as it already does for various news agencies without a destination website. It also proposes helping distribute content more widely via repackaging and syndication. 


How does Google compare to the competition?

Paid online content in the near future is increasingly seeming an inevitability. In July, the NAA distributed a "request for information" to a range of companies asking for details of their paid online content solutions. As well as Google, ten others responded: CircLabs, Journalism Online, IBM, Mather Economics, Microsoft, MyWire, NewsNav, Oracle, ViewPass and YouData. The NAA has published and summarised all their proposals for the industry's perusal.

Google's proposal is particularly interesting because the company's unquestionable dominance of the search market and its existing relationship with many web-users through services such as Gmail gives it a significant advantage. Plus, it already has a news search engine, Google News. It is definitely well-placed to implement such a system.

One drawback for Google would be the fact that many publishers, due to copyright conflict particularly over Google News, see the company as an enemy rather than an ally. The document suggests that the cut taken by Google from content sales would be comparable to Apple's split on iTunes and the AppStore, which Nieman Lab points out is about 30%. Would publishers be happy to share their revenue with Google in this way?

The most similar and serious competitor to Google's proposition would seem to be Journalism Online, the venture led by Steve Brill and Gordon Crovitz. The start-up already has a detailed business plan in place, including projected revenue increase, and last month announced that over 500 publishers had signed on. So although it does not have the web presence in place that Google has, it has made considerable progress in terms of publisher awareness of its product, and intends to launch imminently. It is also promising to give member publishers feedback about how users are purchasing and reading news, in order to improve their offerings over time. Lastly, it has the advantage of not already having enemies within the industry, and the fact that its founders are from publishing backgrounds. Journalism Online's commission would be 20% of subscription revenues, according to the document it presented to the NAA.

So which proposal will emerge as a winner amongst publishers? Or will they decide to go forward with paid content alone and save on broker fees? There are definitely advantages to working through a third party: ease being prominent amongst these, for both the publisher and the user. But maybe a conglomerate as big as News Corp might have the capability to develop its own efficient system and could persuade others to follow suit.

The Taiwanese electronics company Asus is set to launch its very own e-reader before the end of this year, according to its president Jerry Shen, as reported in the Times.

Asus states that not only will the new devices be more intelligent and versatile than current competition, but cheaper too. Although there is little information concerning the exact details of the finished product, Shen hinted at the availability of a budget as well as a premium version.

What will the media landscape look like in five years? That's the question Media Week asked a sampling of industry insiders and researchers representing a variety of media fields. Assuming media innovation continues at the same swift pace it's been going since 2004, the average consumer's daily media interaction will look much different by 2014.

While some predictions recall high-tech fads first seen on the Jetsons - like concerts beamed around the world in 3D - others are not so hard to fathom, with early developments already starting to appear.

Last year, consumers spent more time using paid-for content, such as subscription based websites and premium cable channels, and less time using ad-supported content like newspapers and network television. That's the latest from private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson's annual media survey.

The total amount of time spent with media remained unchanged from 2007 at 3,545 hours per year. However, consumers allotted that time in very different ways than seen in previous surveys. So, usage of media like e-books and mobile media increased, while that for magazines and radio declined.

It is seeming increasingly likely that charging of online general news content may well become commonplace in the immediate future; 'within a year' according to Financial Times editor Lionel Barber. The New York Times has been surveying its subscribers to ask how much they would be willing to pay for online news, and Guardian blogger Steve Busfield pointed out that listeners of the London Times' The Bugle podcast have been asked whether they would be prepared to pay for the 'season' each week. But can a pay strategy work online? The answer has been debated at length.

The big question is, will enough people be prepared to pay enough money, via a subscription scheme or per article, for online content to compensate for and exceed the revenue generated by advertising? The answer to this was thought to be definitively negative for quite some time, but the global economic slowdown and subsequent falls in advertising revenue, particularly online, has started to change this.

Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, has taken a look at newspaper companies' second quarter results and analysed revenue from advertising and circulation. He has found that although ad revenue is falling at companies such as McClatchy and the New York Times, income from circulation is actually increasing. Ad revenue at both companies was down 30% in the last quarter compared to the same period last year.

Revenue from circulation, however, rose 5% in the second quarter at McClatchy, to $69.4 million. The daily circulation actually fell, but price increases made up for this. And at the New York Times, Chittum points out, circulation revenues will pass ad revenues sometime this quarter for the first time ever, if current trends hold. In this year's second quarter, the paper brought in $185 million in ad revenue and $166 million from subscribers. So if the ad income continues to decline at a rate of 30% and the circulation revenue keeps increasing, the latter is likely to overtake the former any time now.

This, Chittum suggests, "points the way toward a new model" based less heavily on advertising. He suggests charging $15 a month for full access to NYTimes.com, and if half of paper's print readers and 2.5% of the website's visitors were to pay, the paper could bring in $189 million a year: enough to pay for the entire Times newsroom. And of course, the paper could still advertise. The Wall Street Journal is expected to bring in $120 million in online advertising this year despite its paywall, Chittum notes. If the Times was able to bring in a similar amount, it could easily survive in online-only format, he proposes.

Chittum disputes Jeff Sonderman's theory, recently outlined in News Futurist, that newspaper subscribers have traditionally paid for the delivery of the paper rather than for the journalism. Their money may have actually gone towards this, but the reason that people have always bought newspapers is, in fact, because of the content. Yes, people are also paying to have this content nicely packaged and delivered to their door, but it is the news that they are after. This contradicts the often-cited concept that content in itself has no value.

And this idea that people will in fact pay for quality content, though not necessarily a consensus, as concluded by The Wrap's Sharon Waxman, does seem to be gaining momentum in the media industry. As well as the New York Times, News Corp and MediaNews Group are looking at paid online content, and start-up Journalism Online is promising to facilitate this for any publishers. News Corp chief digital officer Jonathan Miller said last week at the Fortune Brainstorm conference that journalism will increasingly become a "paid model" online.

And this feeling is not only prevalent among newspapers: Disney just announced plans for a subscription-based product for the internet. "We have ample evidence both in traditional and new media that people are willing to pay for quality, to pay for choice and to pay for convenience," CEO Robert Iger said at the same conference. Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, also expressed his opinion that content on the Internet is "not free, and is not going to be."

So could revenue from paying readers online more than compensate for lost advertising?

The results of the Times of London's poll on whether people are prepared to pay for The Bugle is not very encouraging so far: when presented with different pricing options, 59% of those polled responded 'nothing.' However, of course this does not mean that these people might not be prepared to pay if forced to: it is a very different thing to be asked whether you would like to pay.

Chittum's figures for the New York Times suggest yes, although he does not claim that the numbers could support printing and distribution as well as journalism, and it is unlikely that the Times will kill its print product any time soon. And it is necessary to remember that the Times has always brought in an unusually high proportion of its revenue from circulation: in recent years this has typically been 30-35%, while many newspapers would rely on advertising for 80-85% of revenue. And a subscription is expensive, at about $770 a year for those in the US but outside the New York metro area. The paper has seemingly successfully increased its price twice within a year. It is undoubtedly seen as a product worth paying for: can the same be said for newspapers with less impressive reputations?

Journalism Online's co-founder Steve Brill has presented figures to potential partner publishers that suggest that participating newspapers would be able to keep 88% of page views and 91% of ad revenue. The company's assumptions are that 5-10% of current monthly unique visitors will be willing to pay for content; that 95 percent of those paying customers will choose subscriptions over micropayments; and that after subscribing, those readers will view 30-40 percent more pages than non-paying readers. If these numbers are correct, charging for content might well make sense.

Others believe, however, that paid online content would definitively not be able to make up for lost advertising revenue. Alan Mutter, co-founder of ViewPass, sees increasing the value of advertising by making it highly targeted is a better solution to the newspaper industry's problems. And start up CircLabs is working on creating a product that aims to up the number of page views to newspaper sites. Both of these would, however, allow publishers to make the choice to charge.

Persuading people to pay for something they have got free for many years is likely to be a tough challenge, and it is going to be risky. It is likely to take some time to discover the most effective way to do it. It has a far greater chance of succeeding if it does in fact become commonplace, and the idea that premium content must be paid for is firmly established in the consumer mindset. And although one can argue that the consumer will be benefiting from the quality content that would be supported by pay schemes, their online news experience is likely to suffer if they are confronted by frequent paywalls that stop them from roaming the web freely.

ViewPass was one of the proposals put to publishers at the 'secret' meeting organised by the NAA in May which considered different ideas for monetising online content in a media landscape where revenue from traditional advertising methods is not generating enough income to support newspapers and other news outlets. With ViewPass, creators Alan Mutter and Ridgely Evers are essentially aiming to boost the value of page views by making advertising more effective and lucrative. The Editors Weblog spoke to Mutter to find out more about ViewPass and how he thinks it could be the solution the industry has been waiting for.

Target, target, target

Rather than directly charging consumers for online content, Mutter believes that increasing the revenue from advertising would be the best and most efficient way for publishers to up their overall revenue. Currently, most advertising systems are not producing high enough rates to support the production of content, so a significant change must take place.

The idea, he said, is that the consumer will in fact pay for content "but there are different ways you can pay." The most appropriate way to get the consumer to effectively 'pay' would be by providing information that could allow for highly targeted advertising. The consumer would both supply demographic details and allow their reading habits to be tracked throughout websites that support ViewPass so as to offer a rich picture of what they are interested in and which ads they might pay attention to. ViewPass is not aimed solely at newspaper publishers, but at anybody who puts content on the web, including bloggers. This will help the system really learn what people are interested in and develop a complex picture of them.

Mutter pointed out that the US newspapers who sell ads through Yahoo's targeted ad scheme can make far more than on a standard ad. Mutter stressed that he does not in any way oppose Yahoo's ad network, in fact he thinks that it and ViewPass could be compatible. But he maintains that his proposal is "superior" in the sense that it gathers more authenticated information about the consumer that can be used to target more effectively. For example, Yahoo "cannot target to zip code level because it does not have any way to validate post codes that customers volunteer," while ViewPass, as it takes credit card information when a user buys a piece of content, could easily authenticate postal codes. 

"If it's embraced," said Mutter, "ViewPass will create deep and accurate pictures of actual individuals." Hence, the system will have "a strategically powerful picture of every consumer who registers."

Privacy problems?

An obvious concern for the consumer when using this type of system would be privacy. Mutter said that he is very aware of this, and stressed that "the way we've developed this is so that the system will give information about a person and about what that person is reading in a way that the individual still remains anonymous." Advertisers will only be allowed access to that info for that moment, they will not be allowed to record it. If they do, they will be kicked off the system. He acknowledged that "we have a lot of work to do ourselves on the safety of the database." 

Industry-owned for greater profits

Mutter would ideally like ViewPass to be an industry-owned initiative and said "we're working really hard to enable that." Evidently, this would be an advantage to the industry as it would then be able to share in profits from the business itself. However, he realises that it would be quite a challenge to persuade the industry to agree as one on such a solution. Currently ViewPass exists as a detailed plan that has been continuously developed and discussed with industry leaders, but it is not yet a concrete product. If publishers do not support it as an industry-owned initiative, Mutter would consider taking it forth as a private company, he said.

How it would work

Publishers would have to insert a piece of Java code into their webpages and then would choose the stories that it wants to protect with ViewPass, and the ones it wants to leave open. The publisher has "complete control over the rules," Mutter emphasised and has several different options to choose from with regards to how they make their content available. ViewPass logos would be placed next to the articles to indicate to the consumer how they can have access. One article could be entirely free, or you might have to simply be a ViewPass member to read another, for one you might be required to pay and for another you could be asked to complete a short survey, for example.

For the consumer, the process "would be extremely low impact and non-intrusive," according to Mutter. Once you had logged into ViewPass at one website it would remember you from then on, and once you had entered your credit card details the system would remember them unless you told it not to.  There are a number of sites with whom ViewPass could cooperate in terms of registration, such as Facebook and Microsoft, Mutter suggested. A Facebook user could therefore tie their ViewPass account to this account, which would make it easier to get started.

It would, Mutter admits, be off-putting to the consumer to have to do anything extra to read news, and it would hence be important to market ViewPass in the right way. His idea is that the ViewPass brand would be associated with quality content that is valuable enough to pay for in some way, so that when people see ViewPass content they know they are seeing the best. Thus it would also be a way to brand the content as being quality.

So what are the benefits for the consumer?

The system is "first and foremost a solution designed to replenish the revenues of the publishing business," but there are also advantages for the consumer. Mutter believes that the consumer benefits from the possibility to acquire better calibre content than might otherwise be available if professional media sources continue to diminish due to falling revenue. More concretely, the system would start to recommend articles to users based on their interests, so "you may learn things that you would be delighted to know about if you only knew that they were out there." As Mutter points out, there is so much information on the web that having content pushed to you can be a highly valuable service. Equally, having advertising that is actually relevant could also be extremely useful. It could also be argued that being able to pay for news with time and information is a good alternative to being forced to pay with cash.

Paid-online content

Although Mutter is doubtful that charging consumers online could actually increase revenue, ViewPass would enable publishers to charge for online content by the article, or by a subscription to an individual paper. When asked about the possibility of paying a bundled fee for content from multiple publications, Mutter was sceptical. For the consumer, he believes it would be ideal, but there would be too many practical problems for the publisher. Dividing up such a fee so that all publications were content with their share would be an almost insurmountable obstacle, he maintains. He pointed out, correctly, that it could be difficult to equate the value of different types of content: could a 10,000 word article from the New York Times be awarded with the same compensation as a two line item on a sports score? He does not think that those publications who produce the more expensive content would be content with the small amount of revenue they would receive in exchange.

Bundling content is one of the options that another start-up, Journalism Online, is promising. Will the company be able to overcome the obstacles that Mutter highlights? Journalism Online, founded by Steve Brill, Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery, aims to facilitate charging online and to help its members work out the best way to charge by gathering data on their efforts.

And these two are not the only projects out there that are promising to enhance monetisation efforts of news content. Circulate from CircLabs is another proposal, focusing on upping the number of page views of newspaper articles and hence increasing advertising revenue. The company also intends to use the knowledge of its members that it gathers to institute targeting advertising on the Circulate bar that would follow users around the web.

Mutter pointed out putting too many hurdles in front of users when they are reading news content would swiftly put them off, meaning that publishers should adopt just one system. So which of these is it going to be? Mutter maintains that ViewPass is the one that can make publishers the most money. Journalism Online seems to have somewhat of a headstart, however, with partner publishers expected to be announced in the next few weeks. But will it satisfy publishers' monetisation needs?

Last week Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product manager at Google, published a response to newspaper publishers' Hamburg Declaration which was made public on 9 July. The Declaration states that "going forward we no longer wish to be forced to give away property without having granted permission." It discusses ACAP, or Automated Content Access Protocol, which is a tool created by WAN-IFRA and the European Publishers Council to enable content providers to communicate their copyright terms and conditions online in a machine-readable way. Cooperation from search engines is essential for such an initiative.

Cohen contends that publishers do in fact have to give permission before their content appears on search engines, pointing to a technical standard known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol which tells search engines what can and cannot be crawled. He points out, correctly, that news organisations make their content available because they want it to be found and read via Google, which does deliver many consumer visits to newspaper websites each month.

The dilemma

The 2009 PricewaterhouseCooper report on consumer and advertising movements in the entertainment and media industry forecasts difficult times ahead for print publications as the "digital migration" gathers force. The Outlook frames the fate of the newspaper and magazine industry within the wider view of the global recession and the attendant structural changes to consumer and advertising habits. The geographical regions with the highest media development are forecast to suffer the most chronically. Marcel Fenez, global entertainment & media leader at PWC, spoke about the report in an interview with Publishing-lounge.  

The economic recession, Fenez explains, is catalyzing the process of digitilisation, as consumers are increasingly concerned to obtain better value for their content. The financial benefits of digital material for the consumer will not expire, even when the global economy picks up. As a result, it is not expected that consumption habits, nor advertising patterns will revert back to previous norms. Consequently, the current economic climate is effecting, not a "cyclical recession but one that is going to result in fundamental structural change". Significant changes in consumption and advertising patterns will inevitably have direct reverberations on the news publishing industry.

It is becoming increasingly clear that a proportion of general news content is going to be put behind some kind of a pay wall in upcoming months. Several publishers have expressed their intentions to start charging, and several third parties want to help them do it. Journalists don't seem to want it, it seems pretty unlikely that readers would want it, so how are publishers going to succeed? Can it restore value to good journalism which is increasingly becoming a commodity? The Editors Weblog takes a look at some of the different services on offer and strategies being considered.

Journalism Online

First, Journalism Online, a start-up founded in April by industry experts Steve Brill, Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery, has taken facilitating charging for online content as one of its core goals. Brill made a presentation at the NAA-organised newspaper executives' meeting in Chicago on May 28 at which Journalism Online's mission was stated as enabling "news organizations to restore the optimal mix of circulation and advertising revenue necessary to finance original reporting and editing" hence giving them the chance to "realize the revenue they deserve--and can command--from readers and distributors for their digital content."

Journalism Online is marketing its proposal as an e-commerce platform. The idea is that it would make premium content from multiple publishers easily accessible to readers and allow annual, monthly subscriptions, day passes or single articles. There will also be all-you-can-read bundling options. Publishers will decide what content they want to charge for, how much to charge (though it is unclear how all-you-can-read prices will be decided) and how to charge. In the presentation, Brill suggests $50-60 a year and $5-6 a month for small to large city papers, but he stressed that this was an arbitrary choice and clearly the price would depend on how much content the publisher put behind the pay wall. He had previously suggested $15 a month for an all-you-can-read subscription.

The company maintains that implementing its system will not lead to a substantial loss in traffic or ad revenue, claiming that papers would be able to keep 88% of page views and 91% of ad revenue, as any paid content would be part of a hybrid model. In his examples, Brill demonstrates how he believes a paper could essentially double its income. Brill has also stressed that Journalism Online will incorporate lots of sampling. He told Nieman Lab's Zachery Seward that Journalism Online's assumptions are that 5-10% of current monthly unique visitors will be willing to pay for content; that 95 percent of those paying customers will choose subscriptions over micropayments; and that after subscribing, those readers will view 30-40 percent more pages than non-paying readers.

Overall, the company seems to be presenting its service as a chance for newspapers to focus on their best customers, offering a premium service to those who are prepared to pay. At the Chicago meeting, Journalism Online also emphasised the advantages of paid online content in terms of preserving the print product: it is "about the value proposition of print... about print subscriber acquisition and retention costs."

ViewPass

Another third party service was presented at the NAA-organised meeting in Chicago: ViewPass. It is the brainchild of Alan Mutter and Ridgely Evers, and could be implemented in 9 months at a cost of $6 million. The idea is that newspaper readers would be required to register once with ViewPass and it would then track their activity across participating websites.

Like Journalism Online, it would aim to offer readers the chance to purchase premium online content from multiple sources, with potential for subscriptions, micropayments and bundling. Essentially, the ways in which it differs is that ViewPass would be industry-owned, giving publishers the chance to (hopefully) share profits in the business itself, and it most crucially it would allow users to 'pay' for their content with their time or their information instead of with cash, because of their increased value to advertisers. In fact, ViewPass would focus on presenting readers that were attractive to advertisers for highly targeted ads. Mutter himself is not enthusiastic about charging for much online content, suggesting to Nieman Lab that it would only work for specialist content.

Circlabs

The creation of another start up was announced the day before the Chicago meeting: CircLabs, founded by Bill Densmore, Jeffrey Vander Clute, Martin Langeveld and Joe Bergeron. Its first product, code-named Circulate, aims to "offer a solution" to publishers who are experimenting with micropayments and subscriptions, suggesting that they should charge for content which is "both scarce in nature and of high utility to a segment of the audience." CircLabs is also focussed on developing opportunities for "high-value" advertising revenue, and plans to incorporate personalised news services. Further details are yet to appear.

Efforts of individual publishers

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch has announced that all the company's newspapers would be charging within a year. It is looking at bundling content, according to chief digital officer Jonathan Miller, such as putting all the media conglomerate's New York-based content into one subscription package. One of the company's prime assets, the Wall Street Journal, is proof that paid premium content does work, although of a specifically financial nature. The paper is to expand its paid online options, with plans to introduce micropayments later this year along with a further level of premium subscriptions. Murdoch suggested that the company wants to "test" a pay model on some of its stronger properties first, and there has been speculation that the Sunday Times will be among these. The paid online content debate, although definitely present in the UK, has not been as strong as across the Atlantic, and it would be interesting to see what sort of reaction such a move would provoke.

MediaNews Group is planning to charge online under the belief that "we continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free." A memo to staff from CEO Dean Singleton and president Jody Lodovic suggested that a part-paid strategy is in the works, and made it clear that the company is intending to charge for existing content rather than for new products or services.

The New York Times is apparently looking at two different ways in which it could charge for online content. The first would be somewhat similar to the Financial Times' model, whereby readers could surf the site without charge until a page-view or word limit were reached, when a 'metre' would start running and it would charge a user for the rest of their time spent. (The FT allows 10 free articles per user per month, then demands a subscription.) This would have the advantage of not putting specific content behind a paywall, and therefore not angering journalists.

The other option is a 'membership' scheme: readers would donate money and subsequently be invited into a "New York Times community," which would offer them free merchandise and other benefits. Possibly a tiered membership scheme could be implemented. When these proposals were discussed, Bill Keller told staff that a decision would be made by the end of June. The NYT is wary following its failed TimesSelect experience back in 2007 and seems determined to find a solution that will not damage its significant ad revenue.

Potential obstacles: search and antitrust

Currently many people find their news through search engines such as Google, and for articles to get good Google rankings and appear higher up in search results, they cannot be behind a paywall. Newspapers must strive to find an appropriate solution to this when they start charging: the Wall Street Journal's tactic of allowing its paid content to be accessed free via Google is clearly not fair to its paying customers, and is a definite deterrent to potential subscribers.

Antitrust regulations in the US effectively prevent publishers from coming to a joint agreement on when and how they should start charging for content. At the newspaper executives' meeting in Chicago on May 28, an antitrust lawyer was present to make sure all the discussion was legal. Poynter analyst Rick Edmonds suggested that the use of a third party "vendor" such as Journalism Online could be the solution to these concerns. Journalism Online has taken on David Boies and Ted Olson for antitrust advice.

So, is it going to work? And how?

Undoubtedly, implementing paid content is going to be a considerable challenge and is likely to involve substantial experimentation. Newspapers need to consider what exactly they would want to charge for, for example whether they could create a new paid service or put what is currently free behind a pay wall. It seems as if it would be easier to persuade people to pay for something new, rather than telling them they have to start paying for something previously free. But then people might decide that they are happy with what they get now and that they do not want to pay for anything extra. A paper with a highly developed website such as the New York Times could possibly offer basic news free but keep its interactive graphics and other more innovative content for its premium customers.

As yet, Journalism Online seems to be ahead of the pack with regards to third party services. No papers have publicly signed on but Brill told Seward that he had already spoken to about half of those at the Chicago meeting. In terms of connections and credibility of its founders, Journalism Online has a head start. ViewPass and CircLabs do seem to be onto something, however, with their focus on offering consumers as targets for higher-revenue advertising and effectively allowing them to pay for their news by looking at ads. Could these companies coexist, or is there only room for one?

A crucial factor which should not be underestimated in any attempt to charge online is ease of use for the consumer. People will be far more likely to part with their cash if doing so is simple and straightforward. For this reason, sign-in-once and all-you-can-read offers are likely to appeal. And once people are paying, the level of service should reflect this: good journalism presented attractively and accessibly. An element of personalisation would also seem worth paying for.

Can paid online content 'save' newspapers? If Journalism Online's figures are correct, it looks like it could make a significant difference to a newspaper's fortunes. The next few months will be telling in terms of experimentation and competition between proposals, but it will take some years for the definitive answer to this question to be realised.

Alan Mutter has confirmed that he was one of three people who made a presentation at the 'secret' newspaper executives' meeting in Chicago last week. The product he was discussing, which he has developed in conjunction with tech entrepreneur Ridgely Evers is ViewPass: a single, industry-owned brand that would enable consumers to access paid content on websites and mobile platforms from all participating publishers.

Mutter compared ViewPass to a Visa card, and clarified that it would consist of a "simple, one-time registration system that would remember users as they moved among participating websites." It would support micropayments, subscriptions and bundles of content, similar to Journalism Online. "To address the concern that many consumers may rebel against pay walls," reads the document given to publishers at the meeting, obtained by NiemanLab, ViewPass also gives publishers the option of letting users "pay" for content with time or information rather than just cash.

Last Monday, a little over halfway into the 62nd Annual Cannes Film Festival, The American Pavilion hosted a panel discussion entitled "It's a Mad, New Media World." The six panelists in attendance were John Horn of The Los Angeles Times, James Rocchi of MSN Movies, Anne Thompson of ThompsonOnHollywood, Karina Longworth of SpoutBlog, and Sharon Waxman of The Wrap. Eugene Hernandez from IndieWIRE acted as the mediator.
 
The subject under discussion was the state of new media and its consequences for print media. Horn from the LA Times boldly asserts his opinion that trade magazines will solely and can only exist online by the end of this year. He sounds astonished when pondering how trade magazines can stay afloat as a print platform. Hernandez declared Horn to be the most powerful journalist on the panel. Hernandez credits Horn with this distinction thanks to the idea that newspapers like the LA Times, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal represent a brand.

Google News announced that it has struck a deal with eight European news agencies to host their content and to display advertisements around their stories. The ads will also run alongside content from the agencies whose content Google already hosts: AP, the AFP, the UK Press Association and Canada Press. Google started to display ads next to search results on Google News US in late February, but it was unclear if the move would spread to outside the US. The ads will be contextually relevant, as they are on Google news US.

News agencies EFE, which services Spain and Latin America, LUSA (Portugal and Brazil), Keystone (Switzerland), APA (Austria), PAP (Poland), MTI (Hungary), ANA (Greece) and Belga (Belgium) have all struck news content hosting deals with Google. They are all members of the European Press agency.