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Advertising and Publishing Trends: Changing Business Models |
Moderator: Neil O'Callaghan, vice president, technology, AGT
Panelists: Ed Abrams, associate director, Custom Publishing, Time Inc.; Jim Delahanty, director of production and digital ad services, BusinessWeek; Ira Finkelstein, senior vice president/director of print services, BBDO/New York; Nadia Maudsley, manufacturing director, PC World Magazine; Catherine Merolle, production director, Meredith Corp.; and Bob Morello, CPO and director of creative services, Messner Vetere Berger McNamee
Session Notes: Gretchen Kirby, editor-in-chief, Publishing & Production Executive magazine
Two topics, according to Neil O'Callaghan, are on the lips of virtually every publishing and advertising professional these days: the changing business model of print advertising and economic fluctuations resulting from the adoption of new technologies. Recently introduced in several renowned print publications, convergence technologies--brought to the marketplace by the likes of Digimarc and Digital Convergence-are raising the brows of publishers and ad agencies alike.
Digimarc's offering is a prepress application that imperceptibly places a watermark with a print ad's most prominent graphic. Picked up by a digital camera or scanning device, the watermark triggers a Web browser to launch the advertiser's Web site and take the reader directly to the specific product information targeted in the ad. Digital Convergence's CueCat acts in similar vein, but in this case, the catalyst is a bar-code-like symbol very perceptibly placed in a not-so-prominent place on an ad.
Wired and Popular Mechanics are two of the magazines that have already started to run ads that have been prepared with Digimarc and Digital Convergence's technologies. And Forbes began its campaign to alert readers about its digital convergence intentions by mass mailing special CueCat readers to its subscribers.
But the questions remain: Is digital convergence technology a "no brainer" for publishers and their clients? Or is there cause for concern?
Cathy Merolle says there is due cause. She ponders whether a digital watermark can truly be imperceptible to the reader's eye. And she wonders whether a typical reader's habits will support further adoption. "It presupposes that a reader will read a magazine in front of a computer. When I read, I'm out on the deck or when I get home and have a glass of wine," she professes. "Plus, I can't see asking the subscribers to buy a camera, and I'm sure it isn't cheap for a magazine to foot the bill, either. And how do you measure the cost effectiveness? How many hits do you have to generate to justify whether or not it's worth it? I am, however, interested in the editorial applications. Getting people to our Web sites would be beneficial."
Nadia Maudsley concurs with Merolle's assessment that having the publisher shell out the bucks to provide its subscribers with reading devices may be too cost prohibitive. "At PC World, I'm not sure that we could be on the forefront [of embracing these technologies] if we had to spend any money on it. We're revenue driven to the nth degree. Anything we do must add revenue to the revenue stream."
Jerry D'Elia, vice president/director of printing and transportation services, Hearst Magazines, has first-hand experience with digital watermarking. One Hearst title, Popular Mechanics, is running Digimarc-embellished ads, and D'Elia has learned several lessons from the experience: "It works better on PCs than Macs. Its success will depend on camera calibrations. Depending on the camera, you may read the image on one camera, but not on another. The surrounding light source can also impact if the camera picks up the image, and paper stocks do matter. Using this for a cover 2/page 3 crossover with two different stocks could be problematic."
Recognizing traditional dynamics between publisher and advertiser-publishers must keep their customers happy in order to thrive-O'Callaghan points out that while there still may be some production concerns surrounding these electronic bridges between print and the Web, it may behoove publishers to consider the value-add for the advertiser. "The technologies do provide advertisers with an exact measurement of a print ad's performance. But do we want that to be known," he asks.
Ira Finkelstein suggests that publishers have to keep this value-added service in perspective: "Verifying readership doesn't guarantee a sale. Hits don't always equal sales."
Bob Morello agrees that it's important to establish goals before adopting any new technology. "If you're going to start goofing around with an image, you've got to have a good reason. And what's that? To get [a reader] to a Web site? I don't know. To me, it doesn't seem that the end justifies the means.
"The question I ask," Morello adds, "is how print can remain relevant in the Internet realm? I've see a lot of Internet companies and departments within agencies come and go. A lot of these operations get snowed by some of the techno babble. They get so caught up in the concept, that they really have a hard time with the deliverables. One of the values of print production is that we've sort of gotten it down by now."
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