This post applies to any digital media platform that distributes news articles, books, music, movies, and more.
As I was looking online at a New York Times article, when I scrolled to the bottom of the screen, a popup appeared and told me I had 9 of 10 free articles left for the month, and I thought that was brilliant. As digital media becomes more competitive, and the content on the platform varies, regardless if it’s the pay as you go model; trial, with unlimited after trial; or free until max per month or week as the lure; all companies need to allow their clients or potential clients to see how they are using the digital media platform’s products.
As an example, I would like to see what percentage of Technology articles I am viewing per day, week, or month verses Business articles for a certain periodical, and then I can make an informed decision regarding which periodicals I choose to subscribe to for business and also for Technology. Maybe digital media companies will evolve to have mixed business models, such as, pay per consumption option for all articles after free until max, then for select sections, such as Business or Technology, they may offer unlimited option for the Business, and eventually even a particular editor of Op-Ed pieces. It could be a price that is significantly less then getting the whole periodical, but at least you are able to attract consumers that have been less willing to go for the full paper, and don’t want the hassle of a pay per go, or monthly chargeback per use model.
If I want to choose a magazine for photography, and I am into archeology from a specific region, as a perspective buyer, I might want to know from the publisher’s entire content, and not just what I have read, a drill down pie chart of subject matters for all photos, and then after I selected Archeology, what percentage of those articles are from a particular region, a subject, and then a photographer. This is also a powerful business intelligence tool for existing consumers, and may give you a competitive edge. Also, alliances, that are able to partner for other content, index, and transform that content, say using NewsML–G2, and then perform sharing margin and chargeback. The lure to their portal would be the driver for the competition as well as the vast of content, and partnerships.
A Note for Advertisers
There are other forms of Business Intelligence for your digital medial consumption that can be offered, such as indexed content, text, images, and video. You can not only capture image descriptions, and objects within a video to be indexed, which can be used for advertisers to see what the demographics of consumers are watching videos with the most sneakers, or smartphones, and descriptions that may include dancing clowns. This may assist the small to mid side startup digital advertiser to understand the consumers in their target markets, and abstract the data.
