Many newspapers publish their front page as a PDF on their Web sites and many even publish the entire newspaper’s content.
iTunes’ capability of downloading and presenting PDFs next to podcasts makes it a great delivery mechanism.
Some publications are taking full advantage of the combination of audio and print materials.
Make magazine has a good list of Podcasts which have exploited this opportunity.
This may become more relevant in the near future as portable devices become increasingly capable of reading PDFs (most smartphones do currently).
Apple’s iPhone will include this capability from the beginning.
Why not create PDF versions of certain stories and attach them to the podcasts?
Users want print products?
Newspapers can certainly shine here.
Technorati Tags: Apple, iTunes, Podcast, RSS
elmundo.es is the world leading Spanish speaking news web site but now elpais.com launches a new design that is big, clean, clear and easy to navegate.
With the same thinking that leads many companies to consider selling their printing presses and outsourcing their services, one could argue that the same should be applied to technology.
We’ve talked about it before. I believe this type of deal makes perfect sense. Leave technology development to those who are good at it and concentrate on creating quality content. No matter how scary a company can be, nobody is great at doing everything. If you are great at doing content, there should be nothing to fear.
176 Newspapers seem to agree.
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There have been a number of recent developments in this front that I’ve been meaning to comment about.
For years video has been available on the Web and although it’s quality has improved substantially, the last meters have always been the hardest ones. Getting video from the Internet into the Television has been very problematic in the past. This has improved with the advent of video iPods and other Personal Video Players.
But now, things have really begun to improve, substantially. The first substantial offering came from Microsoft a few days ago when they launched a service for their XBox 360 gaming console that allows people to buy movies and subscribe to Podcasts and view then directly on their TV (more here).
Yesterday, TiVo announced the introduction of a series of features that would allow TiVo boxes to pull video from the Internet such as Podcasts and amateur video (Read full story at the New York Times).
These are technology developments that without content will have no success. But there’s plenty of content that people want to see. Amateur content seems to be appealing enough to justify a billionaire acquisition of YouTube. In fact, YouTube has also announced plans to make their videos available for mobile phones in 2007. Carriers must be very happy.
But no matter how important amateur content is, I believe quality ultimately prevails once the hype has run out. Enter NBC who yesterday also began publishing free video Podcasts of their Nightly News and Meet the Press programs (More here).
I feel technology and content are meeting and beginning to create a compelling offering. This is a great opportunity for newspaper, at least for those who have started to create Audio and Video content. They now have a valid platform for distributing their videos to the living room without absurd spectrum licenses.
I’m sure more options and more content are coming soon.
Ken Elefant wrote an interesting piece in Venture Beat about the most common mobile advertising platforms and how he sees them performing in the long term.
It’s a good read.
Read Here
I hope this time is for real, but things are starting to sound too much like a bubble again when we hear about advertising sponsored stuff. Remember free computers? free Internet access? Those were also advertising sponsored and didn’t work as well as initially thought. After the bubble burst, nobody believed in advertising. Things are changing again.
Google is talking about free cell phones for those willing to see targeted advertising. Will this work? Maybe. We have come a long way from the days of the Internet bubble in terms of advertising technology, and Google is one of the companies that turned the tables in this respect. If a company can pull this off, it’s Google.
The advertising world is increasingly more complex, no wonder Search Engine Optimization experts are able to charge top dollar. The problem is that most media companies are being left out by the technology companies who are creating the new advertising channels. Oh, the blurring lines.
What is it that we do best? Create content? Sell advertising? Print newspapers?
Google, which insists on defining itself as a technology company, doesn’t really create content, but they do sell advertising, indeed, as we mentioned before, they are now experimenting with selling advertising for newspapers. Maybe we should leave the technology and the selling to companies like Google and concentrate 100% on content generation. Quality content I should stress.
Or maybe not.
One thing is for sure, newspapers need to be nimble at adopting advertising technologies in order to offer a complete and compelling proposition for their clients, or the likes of Google will offer a better deal, placing their ads next to your content in Google News.
How long before Google News comes with a printable, customizable edition with advertising sold by them?
Read more about free cellphones from Google at CNNMoney:
Car and Driver has made a mayor redesign. They realize that 80% of their readers don’t subscribe to the magazine and thus have increased their online offerings, including the complete migration of some columns from print to the Web. This with the objective of liberating valuable print space to make the magazine more graphically rich. I’ll love those bigger pictures of my favorite cars!
To complement the strategy, Car and Driver will also introduce a sponsored mobile site.
Now, this is just what magazines and newspapers need to be doing, exploiting each medium’s advantages and providing users a complete multiple-media experience.
Now, the next step should be Video and Audio subscriptions. How about videos taken during test drives pushed directly to my portable player?
Read more about this in Advertising Age.
This makes sense to me because of the convenience factor for some advertisers. However, its not enough and not nearly what Google could be doing to revolutionize print advertising.
From what the article reads, it seems that this trial is only limited to selling, thus Google only acts as another distributor of ads for the selected papers.
The beauty of AdSense is the advanced algorithms that allow very good contextual positioning of advertising and efficiency tracking. This might not translate as well to a world of one edition per day but at least Google should try the contextual component of its system with newspapers.
Doing this would require the integration of Google’s system and the newspaper’s editorial system. This would allow effective contextual advertisement in print.
The question is, would newspapers allow it? I’m sure many won’t. Too bad because this is the future of print advertisement. Someone will allow it and that someone will win.
Google to Try Selling Advertisements for Newspapers – washingtonpost.com
