Tag Archives: Periodicals

Advertising, Business, Entertainment, Music, Technology

Digital Media Platforms: BI Competitive Edge for Businesses & Consumers

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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.

Business, Finance

A Successful On-line News Media Business Model

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When I went to click on a Wall Street Journal tweet, the URL brought me to a registration page, just to read the article.  This is an inhibitor to reading any of their articles, especially on a mobile device.  I just looked for another tweet from another periodical without a registration process, and read a similar article, typically, with the same headline.  The New York Times, so far, in my opinion, has amazing business model backed by great, unique and insightful content. Simply, the New York Times Business Model for Subscriptions: The first 10 articles are free to view per month, and after that, a starter rate of . 99 cents.  After reading a few articles, and citing them, I was hitting my monthly limit in no time.  I took out the credit card and paid, after a few frustrating, “You’ve reached your limit”, page.  No brainer, and believe I am most likely to continue, at the normal rate, when the starter rate expires.  The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal want you to register BEFORE reading their articles, not even a preview.  The New York Times briefly experimented with showing the first paragraph of the article, then you must register.  Long story, short,  If the content is unique and insightful, you will be back for more, and more. I did a similar post on this subject when I contrasted the NYT verses the Financial Times. I am interested to review market news segmentations, e.g.  financial verses a general news periodical.  In this case, the Wall Street Journal tweet was a general news article, which I easily found another, similar article. Maybe the business model for financial periodicals have an alternate strategy?  I am not  buying it, in the literal or physical sense.  The New York Times Business Model just makes cents!

Advertising, Business, Finance, Technology

Winning Business Model for On Line Periodicals: FT verse NYT

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I’ve noticed that both the Financial Times and the New York Times seems to have articles I want to read, but the Financial Times, on clicking the title link in Twitter makes me take the time to register or become a subscriber, which discourages me to open the article even though it has an eye catching title.  On the other hand we have the New York Times, which also has eye catching titles, but allows me to read 10 articles a month without registering or subscribing.  The content was so good I became fustrated every time I reached my limit and eventually, since I quote them so much in my own blog posts (or students for school), they get me thinking about opportunities, I finally payed the initial .99 cents and also will probably renew for the $35 USD. It’s a good business model for online periodicals. The New York Times experimented with showing the first paragraph of the article as a preview to help move forward the consumer with the subscription purchase; however, that was not enough to entice me to purchase, AND only annoyed me further which caused me to want to go somewhere else for my news, a detraction to the content no matter what the preview said.  If the preview was very good, it almost enticed me, but it was  a detractor in a quantifiable way, outweighing the + & – of the psychological effect .

Thanks for sparking the idea Newsweek with your announcement, Newsweek Will End Print Magazine in 2013.  It has been floating around in for a while in my head, but thought it was fairly straight forward.  I was wondering why very periodical didn’t adopt the NYT #subscription   #business  model of how to charge for #periodicals .  Then I thought, maybe it’s just different cultures, different people, different mind sets on acquisition of news / media, which could still be true.  The Financial Times headquarters is in #London , #UK, but these periodicals both have diverse cultures where their headquarters are ‘posted’, so no that can’t be it.  Is it the target market?  No, not really both audiences seem very busy, time is money, so that can’t be it.  Maybe  the spark flashed, the New York Times #nytimes  just has a better approach to getting subscribers than the #financialtimes , so here’s the post I whipped up.