Posts
Surfing around the web this morning for subject ideas I went to Judy Sims's TypePad blog. A recent post concerns the questions you should ask advertisers before building your web site. I think even she would admit that asking these questions now is, well, a little late in the game for most publishers . But her post was targeted at "news entrepreneurs". (My site, CitizenPublishing.net was targeted at this group, but the lack of news and traffic told me it was too early to sustain a vibrant site for that audience.)
I thought her post was especially timely knowing that many publishers are looking to launch their first mobile applications and are looking at tablet publishing for the first time.
I like a lot of Sims's questions -- ones like Question 2: Who are your customers? or Question 3: Who are your competitors? or Question 9: What would you do if you were me? These are great.
One question, Question 7: How do you want to be serviced?, needs I think to be rephrased, to say the least.
Her favorite is Question 10: What would be the dumbest thing I could do in your eyes? I like this, too.
My favorite question to ask a client in any advertising situation is always If you could land just one new customer, who would that be? I like asking this because it accomplishes a couple of things: first, it points out exactly who they are after, then you can match it up to your audience data and proving that your product is reaching that target; second, it might reveal a market you were not aware of, or were downplaying -- for instance, government.
How often do publishers treat new product launches in the mobile media space as, well, new product launches? Most publishers see their iPhone apps as simply a product extension, simply a way to get their content in front of more eyes. Bad move. Each move into a new medium is a new launch. If you think of your new iPhone app as nothing more than an extension of your newspaper or magazine that is what it will be -- merely an extension, not a new revenue channel.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Important questions to ask your advertisers before making the leap to tablet publishing
Sprint demos 4G speeds by using an iPhone to connect using Overdrive to create 'hot spot'
Some people think this Sprint commercial is a poke at Apple -- the iPhone owner is "Steve", and the Sprint guy takes a bite out of an apple -- but really I think this is not nearly as aggressive as Verizon's direct attacks on AT&T.
The commercial is a bit confusing for some, the iPhone can't use 4G, its Sprint's Overdrive that it is essentially creating a WiFi hot spot that the iPhone can connect to. The real relevance here would be connecting an iPad to the Sprint network. But, of course, you can't use an iPad in a commercial for at least another couple of weeks. But for now Sprint's 4G network is very limited, but that doesn't seem to be stopping the company from trying to use its advantage while it can.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Google announces it has stopped censoring Chinese search services; users redirected to its Hong Kong site
Google announced this afternoon that it has stopped censoring its search services in China. The move by Google will effect Google Search, Google News, and Google Images on the company's Google.cn sites.
"Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk," Google said on its official blog. (Google.com.hk header at right.)
Google explained its position this way:
Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced—it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services.The blog post was authored by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer.
Update: The New York Times now has the story on its front page, though it appears they are going by the blog post, as well,
Handmark ready to take on iPad challenges
Speaking to a magazine executive a week or so ago the conversation turned to mobile media and the frustrations faced when attempting to get their company to enthusiastically support the new mobile mediums. My suggestion was simple: you currently work with third party vendors on flip books, iPhone apps and other types of projects -- make these companies do the heavy lifting. A really good partner will want to keep their clients up-to-date and will embrace the new opportunities in tablet publishing.
One such company committed to assisting its clients in the new tablet environment is Handmark, a company I've talked about a few times in regard to their iPhone applications. (See this short post on their New York Daily News app.)
Last week the company publicly committed to supporting the iPad. “We look forward to supporting quality, innovative mobile experiences for iPad customers, leveraging our development expertise and relationships with major newspapers, magazines and other content providers,” Paul Reddick, CEO of Handmark, said in a release.
On Friday I spoke with Jon Maroney, Senior Vice President of Mobile Publishing about their iPad efforts. Prior to joining Handmark, Maroney was president of FreeRange Communications, a company Handmark acquired in January of 2009.
☜ Handmark already supports a wide range of smartphone platforms, now it eyes the iPad.
Handmark already supports the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm webOS, Kindle and other platforms, but the iPad clearly excites Maroney. "One of the things that is most interesting and most exciting about the iPad, from my standpoint, is how people are going to interact with this device isn't know. We are going to find out so much the week of April 5th," Maroney said.
The rush of new platform announcements does not faze Maroney.
"The reason you work with a company like ours is because the iPad comes out, and in six months there will be a software upgrade. And in the meantime there's also some new Blackberry's out, and that's going to break whatever works today. There's going to be new versions of Android coming out and more changes to the Android ecosystem. We take care of all that for you from a development standpoint," Maroney said. "And then the other side of it, of course, you work with a company like ours because we also let you monetize on these devices."
The line between creating partnerships and divesting capabilities can be very fine, indeed
One of the reasons I find myself no longer a publisher is that I have a very, very strong commitment to sales and driving revenue. Maybe I'm weird, but I like working with ad sales people. Like Lincoln's quote about General Grant -- "I can't spare this man; he fights" -- sales people are indispensable ("we can't spare these people; they sell").
But this is becoming a minority opinion, I admit, as companies downsize not only their editorial teams, but their sales teams, as well. I've had more than my share of run-ins with media owners who think ad sales people are an expense completely separated from the revenue they bring in so they downsize their sales teams or outsource them.
A few years back I was hired by RBI, then Cahners, to turn around a couple of trade magazines. It was a great job: magazine doctor. One of the magazines had been, at one time, producing $9 million in revenue. Back during these days the magazine had nine sales people. Looking at the financials one could see that the revenue levels matched sales levels exactly: seven reps equals $7 million in revenue, six reps equals $6 million, and so on. It was also interesting to see that the decline in the number of reps didn't always occur after revenue had declined, but sometimes before. In other words, the surest way to decrease revenue on this magazine was to decrease the number of reps. It was also the surest way to guarantee no growth.
When I joined the magazine it was doing around $2.5 million and had just eliminated a sales position and now only had two reps. Job number one: bring in another rep -- one way or another. I found that the easiest way to get a rep was to find one that used to rep two magazines but had had one sold out from under them. Now, only repping one book, they might leave the company unless we would give them more territory. I would find the publisher for that book at say "listen, you might lose your rep unless you can give them more to sell, why not let them rep my book?" Amazingly, it worked.
Many publishers and many publishing executives no longer have a feel for the ROI of their sales teams. Ten years ago it was common for a publisher to have to do a cost analysis for their teams: add salaries, commission, travel expenses and the like and divide that sum by revenue. A rep making $75K in salary, $25K in commissions, and $25K in benefits and expenses would need to bring in $625,000 to reach the 20% mark -- the amount usually paid to independent contractors. That means, though, that a rep bringing in $1 million, and with their commission raised to $40K because of the added volume, now has a margin of 14%. In other words, those last $350,000 in sales was the difference between a marginal position and a wildly profitable one.
That brings me to this story about ABC News and their agreement with Healthline Networks. Depending on your prospective, this is either the story of a news network that is partnering with another company to bring both news and advertising sales power to ABC, or a deal by one company that is shedding both editorial and advertising power, trying to maintain editorial quality while realizing that Heathline's sales efforts stand a better chance than their own.
Morning Brief: China warns or begs?; iPad & KIndle developments; PEs move into B2B again
An editorial in the China Daily states plainly that China can live without Google.
"China Doesn't Need a Politicized Google" reads the editorial, as if China's policies concerning censorship are not political. "Google's actions show that the world's biggest search engine company has abandoned its business principles and instead shows the world a face that is totally politicized."
So there you have it, China, that great bastion of capitalism wants to give Google a lesson in business principals.
This Sunday's NYT story on the iPad revealed the names of some of the companies that have received Apple iPads to work with during this window before the launch. Receiving an actual device from Apple is the company's way of separating out the elite from the rest of the crowd. In addition to the Times and Wall Street Journal, the story also mentions Major League Baseball. Their iPhone app has been one of devices most popular, and with the iPad's launch date so close to Opening Day, this makes sense. (The regular season kicks off April 4th with a Sunday night game between the Red Sox and Yankees.)
“People see this as an opportunity to do things that have not been done before and get that first mover’s advantage” – iPad developer
One of the developers quoted states that “there’s something about the newness of the iPad that’s driving an even greater level of excitement than what existed in the last year for the iPhone.” Raven Zachary, president of Small Society, is quoted as saying "people see this as an opportunity to do things that have not been done before and get that first mover’s advantage.”
Later this afternoon I'll be posting a story about one of those companies excited about iPad development, Handmark, a company mentioned here before (here and here).
The same Times story mentioned above talks about Amazon's own iPad app.
“We have actually developed a tablet-based interface that redesigns the core screen and the reading experience,” said Ian Freed, vice president for Kindle at Amazon. “Our team had some fun with it.”
And there you have the best description yet of why the iPad will win out over Kindle-like readers: the experience of both the developers and users is superior. (Which is why everyone expects Amazon to introduce a color version of its Kindle
reader, one capable of rendering multimedia content quickly and attractively, as soon as it possibly can.)
Panelfly showing off iPhone and iPad apps.
The WSJ reported on the Sandow Media acquisition of the eight Reed Business Information magazines on Friday. Their story, here, reads like portions of the The Bible -- except instead of so-and so begat so-and-so, it reads so-and-so PE owns so-and-so B2B, who was sold by so-and-so M&A company. This one story includes the names of eight private equity firms and the ever present Jordon Edmiston Group, whose representative is quoted as stating that private equity buying is not at an end. Was that a threat?
