The iPad: Quick Publisher Scorecard
I’ve well used the Moses metaphors; others prefer the Jesus Tablet. But the dramedy around The Apple Launch has been as much Mel Brooks
as Biblical. It’s just more interim technology after all. In fact, it’s
become a tabula rasa for all our digital hopes and dreams, with the
silliness merging with the real import. (And will we remember where we
were when the announcement was made?)
That said, I’m enthusiastic about what tablets can do in the mid-term for news companies, old, new and still being born.
It was nice visit to Mr. Jobs’ Neighborhood, and see, finally, the iPad, a tablet device “thinner and lighter than an e-book.” What’s it mean for the news world? He highlighted the New York Times and Time Magazine, but we don’t yet know the kind or extent of business relationships here. Off the Apple announcement, here are quick pluses and minuses for newsies:
PLUSSES
- New marketing dollars, new marketing dollars, new marketing dollars.
Yes, three plusses. I believe that the biggest impact of the tablet, in
whatever six- to 11-inch forms stick will be in being a magnet for
marketing dollars. I’m not saying advertising dollars. We’re seeing a
huge shift in money — $66 billion a year in the budgets companies are
spending on their own marketing, according to an ongoing Outsell study.
The number in 2006: $22 billion. Marketers are going direct to
consumers, courtesy of multiplying Internet technology. One example: Honda’s Power of Dreams.
Marketers are looking at the tablet this way: It’s part of the new
“multi-touch” marketing landscape. Multi-touch, as in smartphone-plus,
let your fingers lead you in the emerging digital world. For marketing
that means experiential marketing — social sites, games and more. The
news publishing connection: marketers want the right content to find
customers, and news audiences are part of that mix. How, when,
what and where: all to be figured out. Remember, no IAB standards for
tablet advertising yet; this is a 2011 revenue source — if all goes
right.
- The birth of long-form digital reading:
The first-generation news web has been notoriously short-form, read a
snippet and run. We don’t like reading long stories on a work device,
like a laptop or desktop — both with legacy to-do burdens — or really
on the smartphones. We do like to nibble, a nibbling that’s produced
relatively little engagement with customers online, and too few ad
dollars. On a cross-country flight last week, I looked over at my two
seatmates, and both were absorbed in their Kindles. (Yes, I was reading
a newspaper!) The hope here: the tablets will be a consumer device, not a work device, and that readers might enjoy reading news, as they have long done in print. - New revenue streams for content licensing:
If Apple wants to end-around other established players — like Comcast
in the cable world and the wireless giants, Verizon and ATT — it might
well pay publishers for some kinds of content. Already, it is offering
to pay Disney and CBS for their content. Certainly, not commodity news
content, but we can see advantages to Apple in lining up the New York
Times, high-quality business content and more. Ultimately, the tablet
can become a great local device: think local news and info + Yelp +
Angies List + entertainment guides + real community social interaction
and next-gen business directories. We’re far away from that product
model yet; but someone — why not a news company? — will invent it.
MINUSES
- Slow adoption. If the iPad ‘s initial price point is high — though
inevitable price drops will follow — we could be waiting until 2012 to
see meaningful adoption rates. [Add: With 3G pricing of $699 and up, this product may not be mass in 2010, but as price drops kick in, expect it, and its brethren, to become mass products by 2011.] - The familiar news bypass: You know what I mean. Tech product
companies have long devalued news, considering it like air, something
you get cheaply from somewhere, but not worth paying for, like video.
News companies are not immediate players in the Apple launch, so we may
be seeing history repeat itself. - It’s a visual medium. That’s why magazine publishers, through the Next Issue Media
nascent consortium got out ahead of news publishers first on this. When
we think tablet, think this new trifecta: Mobile, Video, Social. Those
are the new connection points in our evolving digital lives, and news
publishers are generally behind the curve in all of them. - Woeful technology integration: If news publishers want to
offer across-the-board — newsprint, desktop/laptop, smartphone, tablet
— access to their products at good price points, they need to
recognize those customers across platforms. Some like the Wall Street
Journal are ahead on this curve; others, like the New York Times, are
behind — which is one reason the Times won’t go metered until 2011.
You have to be ready for prime time to play in prime time.
