Prognostication correct! Free NOOKs

Robin Wauters reports today in Tech Crunch, "Barnes & Noble is now heavily discounting (and even giving away free) NOOK devices with digital subscriptions to a magazine or newspaper, the first time a bookseller has ever done this type of promotion if I’m not mistaken."

You're not mistaken, Robin. And neither was I when, (way back) in November 2009, I ventured that e-readers (as we then called them) would take off only when their business model changed. Eventually, said I, we'd get the reader for "free" when we paid for subscriptions. Just like a cable box.

Back then e-reader sales were sputtering in defiance of so many high hopes. One popular analysis held that the devices needed more features. Others thought slick interfaces and better form factors were the answer. "As soon as Apple properly address e-readers there will be no hesitation," wrote one foolhardy industry watcher on LinkedIn.

Months later came the iPad Spring that revolutionized the category and proved everybody right but me. But I hardly noticed, so thrilling were the times. The ungainly "e-reader" departed the lexicon and in flew the "tablet." Form factors, features and operating systems proliferated wildly. Intense competition kept prices flat while awesomeness climbed steeply. Indeed, some of the hungrier brands began selling devices at a loss in pursuit of market share. All the while, the only fixed variable in tablet sales was content.

Until now. Credit the intersecting challenge of monetizing digital publication, particularly of periodical journalism. All that stuff that used to be free on the Internet and that people weren't happy to pay for once the publishers erected paywalls. The marriage of paid subscriptions and free tablets (details here via Wired) works to close gaps in the perceived value of each.

In 2009, reported Forrester Research, roughly three million e-readers of all types were sold. Granted, there were only a few types. In 2011, reports Computer World, Apple sold 40 million iPads. No doubt sales will continue to rise. But increasingly the buyers will be publishers themselves. They will subsidize the cost of putting devices in people's hands as the enticement to get them to pay for digital content. 

Internet ads up in down ad market. Share will grow.

Internet Strong Amid Tepid 2010 Ad Recovery : MarketingProfs

A decent snapshot of ad spending trends by media and region. And some ammunition for those of us who are bullish on a future in which the web unequivocally supplants print as the main platform for the professional news industry.

Whither the e-book?

An interesting discussion started today on the LinkedIn Digital Publishing Network. From New Delhi, feelancer Devaki Khanna pings a Reuters article that digs into the slow market penetration of the e-book. Commenting from Ireland, Karl Capp, Managing Director at Rolonews Limited, attributes the slow sales to uncoolness and ungainliness, arguing, "As soon as Apple properly address e-readers there will be no hesitation."

Here's what I had to add:

Seems to me that the main delta to overcome here isn't technology, content, cost, sticky branding, or even interface. It's perceived value.

Today you have to pay upwards of a couple hundred bucks to get a basic e-book reader. The price tag by itself is a factor, but the main barrier occurs because people compare this to the cost of a printed book, or even a notebook computer.

Cognitive dissonance: A reader is not a book. Functionally it's so much more. But still. A tablet reader is not a notebook computer. Functionally it's a different animal (it's about display rather than activity). But still.

I think a fitting product analogy to e-readers is the cable modem, the little box needed to get Internet via cable. Initially, when marketed as a purchase extra in a subscription service model, the value was hard to grasp and it was a barrier to entry. But when it was absorbed by the Internet company (subscription provider) as a loss leader, the value delta closed. Today, Internet aficionados can still buy premium cable boxes. But most people get theirs on lease from the cable company and pay a little bit a month for the privilege and don't even notice. The cable companies reap multiples of the purchase price of the modem over time.

My guess is that e-book providers will adopt this model.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Comment I left at Randall Beard's blog in response to the question, "Is the New PR really just the New Marketing?":

PR, marketing – these are professional systems that grew up in the Midcentury era. Today these industries are being reformulated to address the huge Millennial impacts of the web, globalization of media, the resulting emerging markets and consumer behaviors. PR and marketing are big industries that carry water for even bigger industries – the castles of the macroeconomy – P&G, Amex, etc. All that structure does not bend and twist easily.

Yet change is the supreme law of commerce. The methods for generating commerce have always been about whatever works. Today there's more whatever and, as noted in your blog post, the mass media have become more democratic. Whether in response PR is functioning more like marketing or marketing like PR, I see this discussion as a snapshot from the evolving art of persuasion. How do we persuade people to buy in the digital age? My question is, what are the consequences to the PR and marketing industries in changing their definition? How does this affect the way they compete?

Generation F -- Twit version

Here, from current.com, we have a counterpoint from within Generation F: a video hilariously deconstructing the Twitter phenomenon as vacuous, a false religion even.

clipped from current.com Twouble with Twitters

Generation F -- Heroic version

Here Wall Street Journal blogger Gary Hamel portrays corporate employees in the Facebook generation (Generation F) as harbingers of a new sort of meritocratic Utopia. Be sure to click into the article (below, next to the paper clip) and check out his list of "12 work-relevant characteristics of life online."

clipped from blogs.wsj.com The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500 By Gary Hamel The experience of growing up online will profoundly shape the workplace expectations of “Generation F” – the Facebook Generation. At a minimum, they’ll expect the social environment of work to reflect the social context of the Web, rather than as is currently the case, a mid-20th-century Weberian bureaucracy. If your company hopes to attract the most creative and energetic members of Gen F, it will need to understand these Internet-derived expectations, and then reinvent its management practices accordingly. Sure, it’s a buyer’s market for talent right now, but that won’t always be the case—and in the future, any company that lacks a vital core of Gen F employees will soon find itself stuck in the mud.

NYT: A Web Site’s For-Profit Approach to World News

Another interesting take on the evolving Internet business model for journalism, this time from Elizabeth Jensen of The New York Times. Global Post, an online-only outlet for original international reporting, mixes an ad-based free version with a paid version that allows subscribers to suggest article ideas.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Recent articles, free at GlobalPost.com, included reports on Thailand’s Islamic insurgency and Indian yogis worried about the financial crisis. That ad-supported reporting is only one part of the GlobalPost business plan. If it is to succeed, it will depend in part on how many people sign up for a separate paid section of the site, which was to have been available in test mode beginning last week but is now expected to go online in the coming days. Called Passport, it offers access to GlobalPost correspondents, including exclusive reports on business topics of less interest to general audiences, conference calls and meetings with reporters, and breaking news e-mail messages from those journalists. Passport subscribers, who pay as much as $199 a year, can suggest article ideas. “If you are a member, you have a voice at the editorial meeting,” although the site will decide which stories to pursue, said Charles Sennott, a GlobalPost founder and its executive editor.

Why advertising is failing on the Internet

On TechCrunch today, Eric Clemons casts doubt on the viability of advertising to profit online. An interesting thesis to consider now that major daily papers have begun to fold and the move to web-only for traditional journalism has begun in earnest.

clipped from www.techcrunch.com My basic premise is that the internet is not replacing advertising but shattering it, and all the king’s horses, all the king’s men, and all the creative talent of Madison Avenue cannot put it together again. To analyze this statement we need a working definition of advertising, and I proposed the following, which is as general as I could make it: Advertising is using sponsored commercial messages to build a brand and paying to locate these messages where they will be observed by potential customers performing other activities; these messages describe a product or service, its price or fundamental attributes, where it can be found, its explicit advantages, or the implicit benefits from its use.

Marketing to Millenials

http://www.thedailyanchor.com/2009/01/19/marketing-to-millennials-a-lesson-learned-from-barack-obama/

We are quite a tough crowd to communicate and create loyalty with. See the above article which gives marketers some insight on how to connect with Millenials.