Multi-Platform Comes to Ad Sales. At Last.

Summary:  The Tribune Company just launched Tribune 365 (www.trb365.com) that claims to provide integrated marketing campaigns—that is, ads across multiple platforms available within the Tribune media—newspapers (e.g., The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times), other print outlets and television stations.  In fact—and probably more important—it represents integrated ad sales:  one team to sell ad inventory across all of their platforms (and, with hope, others, as well).  We think this is a brilliant step—and long, long overdue.

The Details.

It is pretty straightforward—and both astonishing and understandable (OK, OK, so it’s a contradiction:  Call it a paradox)—that a major, and heavily indebted, media company has finally figured out one of their biggest assets:  multiple platforms.  The Tribune Company’s initiative is called Tribune 365 (www.trb365.com).

Selling ads across these platforms to an advertiser in what the ad industry calls “integrated ad campaigns” becomes a lot more attractive.  More to the point, they overcame one of the biggest obstacles, which is the silo-like ad sales structures of newspaper ad teams selling their ads, TV station ad sales teams selling their inventory, and so on.  Media reports point to a recent campaign for Target, with ads in newspapers, on Tribune TV stations and Tribune websites.

So What?

“Integrated ad campaigns” are not that new but what is new is that they are now available where they count:  where the inventory resides.  This makes it likely that we will see them with more frequency.  Moreover, think about it for a bit:  What the Tribune is doing is a classic case of the model that like very much, which is “audience integration.”  That’s what diversified media companies do best.  They bring audiences to advertisers.  The more diversified they are then the more audiences they can aggregate.

Aggregation recognizes that audiences get their content from multiple sources.  While there may be some overlap (someone who reads “The Trib” and watches a Tribune TV station), there are many people who use one medium and not another.  If those media happen to be owned by one media company, why not place ads across all of them?  That’s audience aggregation.

It’s not always so simple.  We have often seen civil war break out in media companies among the ad sales teams.  The sales team responsible for TV ad sales rebels when the website sales team for the TV station calls on the same clients for their inventory.  It can get ugly.

And it is understandable, because you are dealing with the livelihood of salespeople.  Someone who has cultivated the ad agency (or internal ad buyer) of a large advertiser for years relies upon the sales commission to pay the mortgage .  Why should he or she let a competitor—even someone in the same corporate family—put the salesperson in financial jeopardy?

And (we hope) that’s what the Tribune Company has figured out.  We hope that the integrated sales team means that commissions are not limited to one medium because that is the only way that you can (and should) change the ad sales culture.  After all, ad revenues amount to the lifeblood of most media companies.  And selling ad inventory makes that lifeblood pump.  And earning those commissions is what enables the sale of that inventory.

There is one more thing to add, which is that the ad sales team will be sitting on some of the most lucrative assets–the data from the various media.  User data are what advertisers want.  Multi-platform ad campaigns are what can generate rich data.

New Experiment in News & Coffee

Summary–Newspapers Innovate:  An innovative approach to newspapers is being launched in the Czech Republic:  A (very) well-funded group will open cafes linked to the newsrooms of hyperlocal papers (to be published by the group).  Many Europeans like their espresso with their newspaper (and vice versa) so why not?

Yes, we have promised that this blog is not about newspapers, but we cannot help but look for innovations while all around us people are singing dirges.  The New York Times reported that a new venture has launched in the Czech Republic to publish hyperlocal newspapers in four cities and to open associated cafes.  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/technology/internet/11iht-papers.html?8ad&emc=seiab1

PPF Group will soon publish multiple local newspapers on a weekly basis, in addition to multiple websites (can you say “repurpose?”), plus they will open cafes that will be next to—we mean right next to—the newsrooms for these papers.  Literally, the door will be open to the newsroom of each paper.

In addition, visitors will get help on such matters as building their social network profiles or other training on Internet skills.  The entire project will be branded “Nasa Adresa” or “Our Address.”  They may try to scale the model to elsewhere across Europe.

Oh yes, a couple of minor bits of information:  PPF Group has about a gejillion dollars (though they are putting about $13.4m into it).  And, oh yeah, I knew we forgot something:  Google is a major participant, providing the training and, of course, the advertising.  It just so happens that Google is not first in search in the Czech Republic.

So What?

So, it might be a good model.  The cross-platform approach adds the “real world” to demand for news plus Internet access.  It is a recognition that a “Café Society” is an optimal place to create an intersection of social practices.

Then again, its “goodness” as a model may depend largely upon the unusual circumstances there, to wit:

1. Czech is not spoken by a large number of people, so there is not a lot of space for competition, especially from major players who need large scale;  only those who take localization seriously—e.g., Google—would have a chance.
2. The Czechs have a kind of “Cafe Society,” which in this case means that they like to sit at the cafe while sipping their latte and reading.  It is like Paris.  However, other European countries are not quite the same:  The Italians named their coffee espresso for a reason.  Most coffeehouses there do not even have chairs (only in the restaurant part of the place).
   
3. People in European countries tend to like their newspapers, very much.  The hyperlocal approach, though novel, could be appealing, especially in new democracies, where the local politics are a hot topic.  Think of the broadsheets and pamphlets of London over the centuries.

AP’s Attack on “Misuse” Scores the First Points

Summary:  In what may be a variation on the model of the RIAA campaign against illegal music downloaders, AP has launched an assault on the “free” use of news on the Internet-not just their feeds but, apparently headline links.  A part of this assault is a suit in US district court in New York against All Headline News Corp., a news aggregator.  That court just denied a motion to dismiss the suit, applying the principle of “hot news” to online news for the first time.  One point for AP.  That decision and the legal theories underpinning the “assault” are connected.  Add another point for AP.

AP recently announced that it is fed up with the misuse of its news feeds–an understandable lament given that its customers (newspapers) own AP.  You may be hearing echoes of the famous move, Network, and they are more than echoes.  At the annual AP board meeting, the chairman, Dean Singleton said “We are mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore.”

We take no position on whether this is a good or bad thing.  Many, many talking heads (“typing hands” for a new name for bloggers?) are decrying what they see as a frontal assault on the doctrine of “fair use.”  We do not see it that way.  We do see it as an opportunity to clarify not only the application of that doctrine online but also a way to discuss, and eventually clarify, the appropriate business models for online news and information.

A Few Details

They plan on policing the misuse of copyrighted material.  How is a matter of speculation.  AP has signed up with Attributor, a company with technology that can track use of digital information (stories and photos) that have a digital “fingerprint.”  Armed with that information, AP could demand some portion of ad revenues from sites using the offending materials in a manner beyond the limits of the “fair use” doctrine.  (You heard it here first, by the way.  We wrote several weeks ago that demands by newspapers for such revenue are not unreasonable as a move to increase revenues for online newspapers.)

Fair Use May Change.

We get it.  We might not support the approach (and we might also support it) but fair use has been strained to, if not beyond, the limits of credulity to justify online use of information created by others, for which the copyrights are also owned by those others.  In these situations-where a legal doctrine lags too far behind market development-the doctrine becomes the focus of legal assaults and the consequences are a changed doctrine.  Regrettably, the public debate on this matter has begun to take on ideological “hate” language that relies more on ad hominem attacks than reasoned analysis and argument (in the “rhetoric” sense of that word).

The First Salvo:  All Headline News.

AP is going after All Headline News, a news aggregator.  They have been accused of stripping attribution (including copyright notice) from AP articles and re-publishing them without any changes whatsoever.  Again, we take no position on what they are doing.  AHS filed a motion to dismiss, which was denied by the district court in an interesting opinion.

Why?  Because the court anchored its action to the “hot news” doctrine from 1918 (an opinion from a case that arose from the start of the business of the real-life model of our favorite film character, Citizen Kane).  There, news that is so “hot” (like breaking news) becomes the quasi-property of the people creating the news stories in the first place.  Whatever your opinions on the doctrine, this is the first time that “hot news” has been applied to the online news world.

So What?

We discern a certain theoretical strategy behind AP’s approach, something that seems to have escaped notice with all the screaming against AP now underway.  In a sense, hot news can become something of an argument against a “fair use” defense.  That is not quite it-but we will leave that sentence in, anyway.  Rather, finding the applicability of the doctrine, the court gave AP the basis for arguing “misappropriation.”  That can become the basis of a legal theory that differs from mere infringement.  In a simple manner, it can be explained that the word is the civil law equivalent of “theft” in the criminal context.  Putting aside discussions of legal theories, strategies and tactics, the opening into this legal argument carries with it the potential of using “freighted” language to use in the PR battles that AP faces and will continue to face.

Information Wants to Be Free??

That rallying cry has energized much of the discourse that coincides with the explosive growth of all things digital.  Whether something as diffuse as “information” can be called something singular in that context is one thing;  whether it can “want” anything is another.  But that’s not our point.

There might be a tectonic shift underway (OK, warning: Now we’re getting really speculative).  Most obviously, the collapse of the newspaper industry alarmed people (OK, primarily the pundits and shareholders and employees but you get the point) enough for alternatives to “free” to be openly discussed as new (or recycled) business models.  At an even more abstract level, the conservative interpretation of the “free” market is now in retreat (rightly or wrongly is not our point), and so also might other ideological positions that tend toward a libertarian bent.  We don’t know.  But we do know that AP has a fight ahead of it-and it is a good fight.

The outcome might not be what AP wants-or what anybody wants-but it will be a changed world because of it.

European Newspapers Embrace the Digital Future

Summary:  The digital ventures of European newspapers look like they are paying off with new hopes for robust newspapers.  Plus, you get to lose weight, too.

We have posted quite a few blogs on newspapers (see others at globalstrategic.wordpress.com), an industry caught in a Chicken Little kind of depression.  So we turned to Europe to see what’s happening and it is digital and good.

Want to join a weight-loss club?  Pay $90.  Through the newspaper site.  Want to revise your profile?  Pay more.  In Norway, a tabloid newspaper, Verdens Gang, is affiliated with VG Nett, which provides news for free but charges for other premium services (like the weight-loss club).

Now, paying to upgrade your profile may be a bit much (unless the weigh-loss membership has not been successful) because of the nearly ubiquitous networking sites, but the point is to offer other services for a fee.

The Old Horse of Repurposing Content

Axel Springer, a large player in the publihsing space, revived an old concept, which makes perfect sense:  Write once, distribute many times.  Write the article and post it on multiple sites.  This is the old concept of “repurposing” content for different platforms and different audiences.

Data as a New Source of Revenue

And lest we not forget the lifeblood of newspapers is delivering audiences to advertisers.  If they think about it, the newspapers can mine vast amounts of data and deliver even better information to the advertisers.  This is a good thing.

So, new thinking–including some old thinking–gives these newspapers new revenue and new audiences.  They are not only building their brand, they are building it across platforms to reach both the same audiences and different ones.

And some of them get to lose weight, too.

Site Scraping Gets Rough

Why this matters:  traffic=ad revenues.  Scraping gets riskier.

Last month, the New York Times Corporation settled a suit brought by Gatehouse Media Inc., which runs websites for 125 Massachusetts newspapers.  The NYT’s Boston Globe was essentially scraping the Gatehouse sites.

Technically (and this distinction is important), the Globe site was returning readers TO the page of the article.  Gatehouse complained that readers were bypassing the ads on the home page.  This is interesting.

Intuitively, one would think that a large number of readers who were returned to the Gatehouse site (albeit at a subsidiary page) would in fact go to the gatehouse homepage.  But no, Gatehouse wanted more (rightly or wrongly).  It also turns out that Gatehouse could figure out how to block this process, which probably led to the NYT offering to settle–so as to avoid case law that goes against them.

So what?

Sites regularly scrape or otherwise link to other sites–usually to the subsidiary pages.  We get a lot of people asking of us if they can do it.  Well, this case—though settled and therefore not an opinion for purposes of precedent–suggests (to no one’s surprise) that doing so will subject you to legal challenge that will cost a lot to defend.

It makes sense, too.  Again, no opinion as to whether it is right or wrong, legal or not, but common sense should tell us that people who own the rights and go to the trouble of posting content where they want it posted should be able to control access to it.

Of course, Google is another matter.

The Paper Is Dead! Long Live the Paper!

As of St. Patrick’s Day, much had already been written about the “death” of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer print edition, which the parent company, the Hearst Corporation, shut down on that green day. The paper is now web only, with twenty in the newsroom, down from about 160.

This is not the only news about newspapers these days but, to me, what is most important is the content plan of the P-I site.  Here’s my take:

Little original content (weird).

Include existing blogs (good but unstable;  if they are that good they will leave for a better gig.)

Links to other sites: While many news sites do this, is it really wise?  Link to other sources within the Hearst family (see below).

Local government officials as columnists:  Now there’s a thriller.  Snore.

Hearst magazine content:  This is a good idea.  Hearst owns numerous magazines.  Repurpose the content AND link to the magazine sites.  Keep the traffic in the family. This is probably a good idea.

How they will differentiate themselves from the sites of local TV stations remains to be seen.  At least the inclusion of commentary may make it fresh.

What seems to be missing from the reports of the plans are social networking and UGC functionality.  Local Little League teams or AYSO teams should be invitted to create their pages there.  It would cost the P-I little to enable such additional pages to be created.

In that approach, they could become something of a virtual community center.  But whatever direction they take, they should build a brand–or build on the brand they have, which is a pretty good one.  And, the good news in all this:  the newspaper industry now has a testbed–one of many more to come in the very near future, like the next couple of months, given the  terror felt (rightly or wrongly) by newspaper corporate owners.

Long live the paper!

Full disclosure:  a variation on this blog will be (or has been) posted on the blog “Convergent Realities” at http://www.thectcnetwork.org.