Archive for the 'Media' Category

To Charge or Not to Charge for Content

Published
by
Dave
on February 25, 2009
in Attention Economics, Business Models, Media and Publishing
. 1 Comment

As public lead for Creative Commons South Africa, I’m often faced with content publishers asking me questions like: How can we possibly afford to stay in business while giving away the fruits of our labour for free?

I’ll cover three basic ways.

1. Advertising

The most obvious answer is that you can make your money back from advertising. However, quality journalism and production is not cheap, so it is quite difficult to make sufficient profit from advertising and affiliate revenue alone if you’re relying on original content to bring in your readers.  Archived content can, however, provide bonus revenue from people coming across old content that you may already have recovered your costs on.

2. E-Commerce and Affiliate Revenue

A number of publications, such as Backpackers.com are using e-commerce to fund their publications (in addition to advertising). You can also get commissions from related products and services that you recommend via your site (some publications have ethical issues with this, as it can be seen to bias the writing toward the particular products/companies that affiliations have been set up with).

3. Freemium

Some companies, such as MarketingProfs, give away some of their articles for free but charge for full access to all their articles. Others, like Trendwatching, give their content away for free, but charge a premium for high-quality summaries and live presentations of it. There are many ways to apply freemium – for example, you can give free access for a limited time only, or free digital access to drive print subsriptions or attendance at events. Andrew Chen has devised a useful little spreadsheet to help you evaluate the viability of freemium for your product or service.

Chris Anderson has identified four types of free that can work in business, an article worth checking out. I’ve reproduced his visual summary below:

The Four Types of Free

Lastly, you may find that giving your content away for free doesn’t work for you. The fact is, that despite the overwhelming amounts of free content available online today, it’s still time consuming to find the best knowledge and information that you can trust and use. People, like me, are still prepared to pay a little extra for access to well researched and produced  information. Walter Isaacson wrote an insightful piece about the need to charge for content in this week’s Time magazine (which is, ironically, available for free HERE)

Oh, and by the way… Creative Commons is not all about content creators giving content away for free. Yes, you can sell your own Creative Commons licensed work, while limiting others from doing the same.  Creative Commons licenses allow others to share your work, while giving you credit for what you’ve done. They can only sell it if you have allowed for commercial use of it.

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Good Times for Digital Marketing

Published
by
Dave
on February 14, 2009
in Advertising, Marketing and Media
. 2 Comments

With the looming global financial recession, many businesses are being more cautious about where they spend their money. One of the first budgets that tends to be slashed by big businesses is Advertising and Marketing.

In light of this, more Marketers are investing a higher proportion of their budget into digital marketing solutions – online and mobile.

There are a few key reasons for this:

1. It’s easier to track the results of digital marketing, with simple analytics tools, or pay-for-performance pricing on many channels.
2. Well executed digital campaigns gather momentum and can become marketing assets.
3. Digital campaigns can simultaneously inform consumers, while gathering insight about them
4. Digital channels are two-way, so the call-to-action can be more immediate – leading to higher ROI.

Media owners whose traditional advertising earnings are on the decline are also taking alternative and innovative approaches reader engagement more seriously. See, for example, what the New York Times are doing with their “Prototypes“.

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The 7 Mass Media and the 4th Screen

Published
by
Dave
on January 19, 2009
in Media and Mobile
. 11 Comments

In 2006 the telecoms and tech author Tomi Ahonen coined the term “Seventh of the Mass Media” to explain why services on mobile need not be copies of internet or TV content – it describes the evolution and convergence of mass media from print to mobile. It’s an interesting concept that I often get asked to include in introductory presentations about Mobile Marketing.

The seven mass media in order of their introduction are:

1 – Print (books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, etc) from the late 1400s
2 – Recordings (records, tapes, cassettes, cartridges, CD’s, DVD’s) from the late 1800s
3 – Cinema from about 1900
4 – Radio from about 1910
5 – Television from about 1950
6 – Internet from about 1990
7 – Mobile phones from about 2000

There’s fascinating stories about these all along the way, but we’re going to focus on Internet and Mobile.

The internet was the first “inherent threat” mass media channel. Inherent threat means that the internet could challenge any previous media and cannibalize it  – for example, print articles can be read online, tv shows viewed online, radio shows listened to etc. Additionally, the internet introduced three powerful concepts:

1. It was the first interactive media,

2. It offers search, and

3. It enables social networking

Mobile wasn’t born as a “Mass Media” until Radiolinja (in Finland) launched the first downloadable content to mobile phones – the downloadable ring tone – in the Autumn of 1998. This started the shift of mobile from telecommunications to media.

Ahonen points out that there are seven features that distinguish mobile from all the other media:

1.  Mobile is the first personal mass media
2.  Mobile is permanently carried
3.  Mobile is always-on
4.  Mobile has a built-in payment mechanism
5.  Mobile is available at the point of creative inspiration
6.  Mobile has the most accurate audience measurement
7.  Mobile captures the social context of media consumption

Many may claim that the internet offers some of the benefits (personal, payment, audience accuracy and social context). However, as Ahonen states:

The internet is only semi-personal such as shared computers at internet cafes, home and the office, and the ability for example of employers to read content consumed by employees. The internet in its native form cannot handle money or payments, and requires work-arounds such as Paypal accounts and using credit cards. On mobile payments can be enabled on the click, such as with downloading ring tones.

The Systems View blog explores some of the unique dimensions of Web and Mobile in more detail.

Mobile is also often referred to as the “fourth screen”, the first three being Cinema, Television and PC. Nokia sums it up quite nicely in this advert:

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Statement by the Seventh Africa Media Leadership Conference, Held in Kampala, Uganda (May 24 – 27)

Published
by
Dave
on May 29, 2008
in Digital UBuntu, Events, Media and Mobile
. 0 Comments

About 30 heads of media firms from Southern Africa, West Africa, East Africa and the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and the Seychelles attended the conference, which was organised and hosted by Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) and Rhodes University’s Soll Plaatje Institute for Media Leadership (SPI).   At the end of the conference, the following statement was compiled:

It is agreed that new media options have the potential to be hugely profitable and effective. The spread of global culture will likely be the major determinant of how lives are to be lived now and in the future.

African media leaders recognise the need to embrace and integrate new technology into daily operations.

A legacy of weak communications infrastructure is not necessarily a handicap for information delivery.

The proliferation of cell phones in Africa, together with rapidly developing cell phone technology, provides one of the best opportunities to bridge the information gap among media consumers.

With technology developing faster than media laws, belligerent administrations may find themselves unable to stem the flow of credible information if content providers from the traditional domains of print and electronic media develop strong and mutually beneficial partnership agreements with the technical sector.

The possibility of every cell phone user becoming a content provider exists in today’s digital society, potentially rendering censorship and media house closures lame-duck attempts to stem the free-flow of information.

While traditional media is far from dead, new technology offers the ability to reach those who have had little or difficult access to global, regional and local news streams up to now, and will in fact add value to existing traditional technologies.

Recent events in Kenya demonstrated the power of text messaging following the government’s banning of live current affairs broadcasts.

Delegates recognise the need for a more robust approach to disseminating vital and credible information in Africa’s zones of crisis, noting that in Zimbabwe

* There are increased physical attacks, torture and other forms of intimidation against the general population but in particular against the media, civil, and human rights groups by ruling ZANU PF party supporters, the security forces and extra-legal militia ahead of the presidential run-off election in June.

* Food distribution is amongst the weapons being used to influence voting patterns.

* The MDC says that more than 40 of its supporters have been killed since the March 29th elections.

* These acts of violence are meant to force the population to vote for President Robert Mugabe.

* Delegates condemn this barbaric action and urge the Zimbabwean Government to respect the rule of law and the will of the people.

While in Ghana –

* The Government is working to pass a freedom of information bill into an act which aims to empower the populace, more so media practitioners easier access to information. While the Ghanaian population is pleased with the prospects of an environment offering freer expression, there is general apprehension that the process is too slow.

* The Ghana Government is therefore urged to finalise the process without any further delay.

And in South Africa

* Delegates condemn recent and ongoing acts of xenophobic violence and in particular the government’s slow reaction to publicly condemn and stem these horrific acts.

* A more pro-active approach by the government and security forces, in concert with civil society, human rights organisations, medical service providers and the media, to operate as an efficient communications conduit is strongly urged.

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