Former AOL executive Ted Leonsis was frustrated: He'd produced a critically acclaimed documentary called Nanking, a film that looked at some Westerners who had protected Chinese civilians during a brutal, six-week attack by the Japanese army in 1937. But he was pretty sure the film, which premiered in 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival, would reach a relatively small audience.
Only a few hundred movie theaters in the U.S. will even show documentaries, and even those cinemas don't always give non-fiction films prime spots on their schedules. Distribution is a source of aggravation for many documentarians.
Unlike most filmmakers, though, Leonsis, who stepped down from day-to-day management at AOL at the end of 2006, had the wherewithal to do something about the situation. Last year he launched SnagFilms, a company that aims to distribute documentary films via the Internet. But rather than just stream its library of 650 titles through the SnagFilms site, the company is enabling portals, news sites and individual fans to share the movies through their own Web sites, blogs, Facebook home pages and other sites.
"Everyone talks about user-generated content," says Leonsis, who also is majority owner of NHL's Washington Capitals. "Let's talk about a new category called user-distributed content,"
Leonsis' Nanking, which will be available online for the first time Memorial Day weekend, is the centerpiece of an 10-film slate Snag is presenting during the holiday; each of the movies commemorates the heroism of soldiers and civilians during periods of war and conflict.
For films released in theaters Snag provides an opportunity for the documentaries to find new audiences. A blogger who is writing about alcohol abuse on college campuses, for example, might seek to embed in her blog a Snag video player that shows the movie Haze, a look at a drinking-related hazing incidents.
Filmmakers who make their movies available to Snag benefit in a few ways: For each film it includes a "Buy DVD" button that takes a viewer immediately to the documentarian's DVD distributor. Leonsis contends that many Snag users will only watch a portion of the film via the Internet, and that true fans will end up purchasing the film to watch on their home televisions.
Snag also sells advertising in the documentaries, and splits the ad revenue with the filmmakers. "We are writing checks to filmmakers every quarter," Leonsis says. "They're not always big, sometimes as small as $20 but sometimes more than $1,000."
Finally Snag offers users a chance to make an online donation to a cause of the documentary maker's choosing.
But for most directors who work with Snag, the main benefit is the opportunity to reach more people. "Filmmakers have never had this kind of opportunity before," says Steven C. Barber, whose film, Return To Tarawa, is part of Snag's Memorial Day slate. "I can get my film to every single country this way."
Barber's film has already run on Discovery's Military Channel, and many of the films in Snag's library have traveled a fairly conventional path for documentaries (film festival, theatrical or television premiere, DVD) before landing at Snag. But Snag CEO Rick Allen says the company is looking for more documentaries to launch on Snag, a concept that would upend the traditional theatrical distribution model.
(Entrepreneur Mark Cuban has also sought to disrupt theatrical release windows, showing films on his HDNet Movies channel two days before the film appears in theaters.)
Allen says it is too early to know if Snag's Internet-distribution efforts will cause major movie studios to think differently about their current models, but he does believe the film industry will go through lots of experimentation in the coming years.
"I think everybody believes that digital distribution is the wave of the future and they're all trying to figure our how it affects content delivery and content creation," Allen says. "I think people in large media organizations have seen the success of something like Hulu and its broadened people's ideas about how to get content out there and consumed."
[the article was originally published at http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/18/technology/mehta_docs.fortune/?postversion=2009051810]
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Microsoft Rolls Out Its Contextual Ad Network
Microsoft has taken its Content Ads contextual network out of beta.
The official launch of Content Ads, which media buyers can use to place keyword-targeted ads on up to 1,000 sites including WSJ.com, FOX Sports, and RunnersWorld.com, is part of an upgrade to the company's adCenter pay-per-click ad buying system. The upgrade also includes enhanced targeting, bidding and keyword research options.
Microsoft's answer to Google's AdSense network, Content Ads enables advertisers to deliver content-relevant ads across the Microsoft content network audience. With its general release, the offering has added a site exclusion option that allows advertisers to withhold their ads from up to 500 sites in the network at the campaign or ad group level. Additionally, marketers can now analyze the performance of individual sites in the Content Ads network.
"With this increased visibility into Content Ad placement and performance of their Content Ads, advertisers will be able to help control the distribution of their Content Ads and improve ROI," said Brian Boland, director of search and media with Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group. Boland claimed financial services advertisers have found particular success with Content Ads to date.
[the article was originally published at http://www.clickz.com/3633791]
The official launch of Content Ads, which media buyers can use to place keyword-targeted ads on up to 1,000 sites including WSJ.com, FOX Sports, and RunnersWorld.com, is part of an upgrade to the company's adCenter pay-per-click ad buying system. The upgrade also includes enhanced targeting, bidding and keyword research options.
Microsoft's answer to Google's AdSense network, Content Ads enables advertisers to deliver content-relevant ads across the Microsoft content network audience. With its general release, the offering has added a site exclusion option that allows advertisers to withhold their ads from up to 500 sites in the network at the campaign or ad group level. Additionally, marketers can now analyze the performance of individual sites in the Content Ads network.
"With this increased visibility into Content Ad placement and performance of their Content Ads, advertisers will be able to help control the distribution of their Content Ads and improve ROI," said Brian Boland, director of search and media with Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group. Boland claimed financial services advertisers have found particular success with Content Ads to date.
[the article was originally published at http://www.clickz.com/3633791]
Pepsi Crafts 'Throwback' Spots for Hulu Play
In a sign of Hulu's growing clout for building brands, Pepsi has crafted retro-themed spots to run with Hulu's selection of shows from the 1970s and '80s.
The 15-second ads promote "Pepsi Throwback," a beverage launched in April to tap into the nostalgia market. It features packaging reminiscent of '70s designs -- and uses real sugar like the soft-drink recipe did 40 years ago.
Pepsi is running the commercials, beginning today, with vintage fare on Hulu like Hill Street Blues, Battlestar Galactica and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. In all, Pepsi plans to run 11 spots with more than 200 programs through June 15.
The beverage giant hopes the ads will connect with a youth audience that is discovering programs from the '70s and '80s thanks to Hulu. While many of the service's most popular shows are current TV hits, some older entries -- like Doogie Howser, M.D., Alf and Married...With Children -- have found a second life on the site.
"We know Millennials are craving this content," said Ana Maria Irazabal, Pepsi's U.S. brand marketing director. "What happened in the past is not old, it's considered new because they haven't seen it before."
In one spot called "Pet Rock," a Pepsi Throwback can chats with the U.S. Bicentennial-era collector's item about how the two "go way back." The clip closes with a shot of the Pepsi Throwback can on a shag carpet and the message "Made with real sugar" in psychedelic font. Other iterations feature the can bantering with other touchstones from the era, such as a fondue pot, an eight-track player and a Polaroid camera.
The program sprung from a collaboration between several Pepsi agencies, including brand shop TBWA\Chiat\Day, media agency OMD and digital strategy firm Undercurrent.
Pepsi also worked with IAC-owned youth entertainment site CollegeHumor.com to create three of the commercials. CollegeHumor's spots feature two guys spoofing the '80s. In one, they are shown playing videogames when a phone call arrives from someone who uses vintage catchphrases like "Eat my shorts."
The challenge was creating compelling ads on a shoestring budget, said Irazabel. "If we don't have cost efficiencies we wouldn't be able to produce 12 spots," she said. "They need to be nimble."
Hulu, which publicly launched 14 months ago, has quickly registered impressive growth. Estimates of its audience vary widely. According to ComScore, it attracted 42 million visitors in March. Nielsen, parent of Adweek, estimates its audience that month at 8.9 million. Both services believe Hulu's audience and views are up sharply.
Its advertising efforts have not kept pace, despite keen interest from brands in attaching themselves to high-quality, professional content. Hulu visitors frequently see public service ads, and nearly all the site's commercials consist of repurposed TV spots. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar has complained that not enough advertisers are crafting spots geared to the environment.
"Our goal is to target highly relevant environments and experiences for users and for advertisers' brands which ultimately allows us to increase the effectiveness of our advertising platform," Hulu svp of advertising J.P. Colaco said in a statement. "The Pepsi example is one that allows us to uniquely bring together more than 200 relevant archived shows with retro-themed advertising to create a more immersive and engaging experience."
[the article was originally published at http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i505437152ed713675ae9ae9f8bf96bf6]
The 15-second ads promote "Pepsi Throwback," a beverage launched in April to tap into the nostalgia market. It features packaging reminiscent of '70s designs -- and uses real sugar like the soft-drink recipe did 40 years ago.
Pepsi is running the commercials, beginning today, with vintage fare on Hulu like Hill Street Blues, Battlestar Galactica and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. In all, Pepsi plans to run 11 spots with more than 200 programs through June 15.
The beverage giant hopes the ads will connect with a youth audience that is discovering programs from the '70s and '80s thanks to Hulu. While many of the service's most popular shows are current TV hits, some older entries -- like Doogie Howser, M.D., Alf and Married...With Children -- have found a second life on the site.
"We know Millennials are craving this content," said Ana Maria Irazabal, Pepsi's U.S. brand marketing director. "What happened in the past is not old, it's considered new because they haven't seen it before."
In one spot called "Pet Rock," a Pepsi Throwback can chats with the U.S. Bicentennial-era collector's item about how the two "go way back." The clip closes with a shot of the Pepsi Throwback can on a shag carpet and the message "Made with real sugar" in psychedelic font. Other iterations feature the can bantering with other touchstones from the era, such as a fondue pot, an eight-track player and a Polaroid camera.
The program sprung from a collaboration between several Pepsi agencies, including brand shop TBWA\Chiat\Day, media agency OMD and digital strategy firm Undercurrent.
Pepsi also worked with IAC-owned youth entertainment site CollegeHumor.com to create three of the commercials. CollegeHumor's spots feature two guys spoofing the '80s. In one, they are shown playing videogames when a phone call arrives from someone who uses vintage catchphrases like "Eat my shorts."
The challenge was creating compelling ads on a shoestring budget, said Irazabel. "If we don't have cost efficiencies we wouldn't be able to produce 12 spots," she said. "They need to be nimble."
Hulu, which publicly launched 14 months ago, has quickly registered impressive growth. Estimates of its audience vary widely. According to ComScore, it attracted 42 million visitors in March. Nielsen, parent of Adweek, estimates its audience that month at 8.9 million. Both services believe Hulu's audience and views are up sharply.
Its advertising efforts have not kept pace, despite keen interest from brands in attaching themselves to high-quality, professional content. Hulu visitors frequently see public service ads, and nearly all the site's commercials consist of repurposed TV spots. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar has complained that not enough advertisers are crafting spots geared to the environment.
"Our goal is to target highly relevant environments and experiences for users and for advertisers' brands which ultimately allows us to increase the effectiveness of our advertising platform," Hulu svp of advertising J.P. Colaco said in a statement. "The Pepsi example is one that allows us to uniquely bring together more than 200 relevant archived shows with retro-themed advertising to create a more immersive and engaging experience."
[the article was originally published at http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i505437152ed713675ae9ae9f8bf96bf6]
Scribd borrows a page from iTunes
Scribd is proposing to do for books what iTunes did for music -- let readers buy only what they want to read.
Eight years ago, Apple Inc. turned the music industry upside down when it launched iTunes, an online music store that let listeners cherry-pick one or two songs instead of having to buy the whole album. Starting today, Scribd is giving readers the option of buying content, including paying a few dollars for a chapter or two from a travel guide or a how-to book.
That's just one example of the flexibility that digital book purveyors are experimenting with as printed content migrates to the digital format. Another is the pricing model. Paperbacks have largely been priced at about $10 to $15, while hardcovers are $25 to $30. With digital books, that price could be any amount. Scribd just takes 20% of whatever price publishers and authors set for their works. The rest goes to the writer or publisher. Some authors, for example, are releasing their books on Scribd for $2.
One of them is Kemble Scott, a 46-year-old San Francisco writer whose first book, "SoMa," was published as a trade paperback in 2007. For his second book, "The Sower," Scott eschewed print and decided to debut his novel on Scribd as a $2 digital book.
Scott chose the digital route for its immediacy. His thriller includes a number of contemporary references such as swine flu and Susan Boyle, a Scottish singer who rose to media stardom on the wings of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. "Publishing a book the traditional way can take a year to 18 months from the time you find a publisher to the time it ends up on store shelves," Scott said. "Now I can publish a book instantly that makes the most contemporary pop culture references of the day."
As for the $2 price, Scott said he and several other authors on Scribd thought the amount would be low enough that readers partial to print would take a gander with books on a screen. (Readers can also purchase books in a format that can be printed.)
"We realized that if we want people to try something new, we had to price it appropriately," Scott said. "We felt $2 puts it in the realm of an impulse buy. Paperbacks were invented during the Great Depression as a low-cost option. Now we're in the Great Recession, so we decided to give people a price break."
Still, at $2, Scott will make more money per copy than he did with his first book, priced at $15. His contract for "SoMa" gave him 7.5% of the cover price for each copy sold, or roughly $1.12. His contract with Scribd for "The Sower" gives him 80% of $2, which is $1.60 per copy. The question is whether Scribd will be able to push the kind of volume on its website that a traditional publisher can through bookstores.
Scribd's chief executive and co-founder, Trip Adler, believes it can. The 2-year-old website already has 60 million unique readers a month, Adler said. Until today, the site has been primarily supported by ads. Writers have uploaded millions of documents for anyone to read, including family recipes, original music scores, academic research papers and doctoral dissertations and even original novels.
Until today, access to those works had been free. But Scribd, like other digital book players such as Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Sony Corp. and O'Reilly Media Inc. (which put their entire catalog on Scribd), is seeing how digital distribution can transform the publishing industry's business model.
Scott sees opportunity in digital publishing. "With print, my income was limited by the number of runs the publisher made," he said. "Online, it's limitless."
[the article was originally published at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-scribd18-2009may18,0,6817936.story]
Eight years ago, Apple Inc. turned the music industry upside down when it launched iTunes, an online music store that let listeners cherry-pick one or two songs instead of having to buy the whole album. Starting today, Scribd is giving readers the option of buying content, including paying a few dollars for a chapter or two from a travel guide or a how-to book.
That's just one example of the flexibility that digital book purveyors are experimenting with as printed content migrates to the digital format. Another is the pricing model. Paperbacks have largely been priced at about $10 to $15, while hardcovers are $25 to $30. With digital books, that price could be any amount. Scribd just takes 20% of whatever price publishers and authors set for their works. The rest goes to the writer or publisher. Some authors, for example, are releasing their books on Scribd for $2.
One of them is Kemble Scott, a 46-year-old San Francisco writer whose first book, "SoMa," was published as a trade paperback in 2007. For his second book, "The Sower," Scott eschewed print and decided to debut his novel on Scribd as a $2 digital book.
Scott chose the digital route for its immediacy. His thriller includes a number of contemporary references such as swine flu and Susan Boyle, a Scottish singer who rose to media stardom on the wings of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. "Publishing a book the traditional way can take a year to 18 months from the time you find a publisher to the time it ends up on store shelves," Scott said. "Now I can publish a book instantly that makes the most contemporary pop culture references of the day."
As for the $2 price, Scott said he and several other authors on Scribd thought the amount would be low enough that readers partial to print would take a gander with books on a screen. (Readers can also purchase books in a format that can be printed.)
"We realized that if we want people to try something new, we had to price it appropriately," Scott said. "We felt $2 puts it in the realm of an impulse buy. Paperbacks were invented during the Great Depression as a low-cost option. Now we're in the Great Recession, so we decided to give people a price break."
Still, at $2, Scott will make more money per copy than he did with his first book, priced at $15. His contract for "SoMa" gave him 7.5% of the cover price for each copy sold, or roughly $1.12. His contract with Scribd for "The Sower" gives him 80% of $2, which is $1.60 per copy. The question is whether Scribd will be able to push the kind of volume on its website that a traditional publisher can through bookstores.
Scribd's chief executive and co-founder, Trip Adler, believes it can. The 2-year-old website already has 60 million unique readers a month, Adler said. Until today, the site has been primarily supported by ads. Writers have uploaded millions of documents for anyone to read, including family recipes, original music scores, academic research papers and doctoral dissertations and even original novels.
Until today, access to those works had been free. But Scribd, like other digital book players such as Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Sony Corp. and O'Reilly Media Inc. (which put their entire catalog on Scribd), is seeing how digital distribution can transform the publishing industry's business model.
Scott sees opportunity in digital publishing. "With print, my income was limited by the number of runs the publisher made," he said. "Online, it's limitless."
[the article was originally published at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-scribd18-2009may18,0,6817936.story]
Nielsen: Hulu's Traffic Soars While FIM's Plummets
Hulu’s video traffic has grown at a staggering clip over the past year—driven in part by an older (35-plus) Web audience. Meanwhile, over the same period of time, former Web video powerhouse Fox Interactive Media has seen its streaming traffic plummet. And all the while YouTube has maintained its dominance of the category—accounting for 58 percent of all video streamed on the Web in the U.S.
Those are just a few of the findings in the latest VideoCensus report issued by Nielsen Online. For example, in April, Hulu streamed over 373 million videos, a whopping increase of 490 percent versus the same month last year. According to Nielsen’s analysis, a big chunk of that growth can be attributed to adults 35 to 49, who make up 30 percent of the site’s audience. In the past six months Nielsen found that demo’s time spent per viewer increased by 154 percent to 416 minutes per month on Hulu. That minutes-per-month figure is 10 percent larger than any other age group found on the site—indicating that the 35-plus crowd is drawn to Hulu’s collection of longer-form content—much of which is sourced from TV.
However, to keep things in perspective, even as Hulu soars, YouTube is hardly shrinking in its wake. The Google-owned video site saw its total volume of streams climb by 36 percent in April to nearly 5.5 billion videos compared to the same period last year. That’s almost 15 times as many videos as Hulu streamed last month. The 35 to 49 crowd also spent three times as much time on YouTube as they did on Hulu (nearly 3 billion minutes versus less than 1 billion).
Meanwhile, Fox Interactive Media (FIM), which includes social networking giant MySpace, is quickly losing its stature among the top Web video players. FIM properties generated 201 million streams in April, representing a slide of 39 percent year over year (and just 54 percent of Hulu’s video volume). That places FIM behind Yahoo, which delivered 203 million streams, a decline of 8 percent versus last year for the portal.
Gaining ground on FIM is MTV Network’s Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network, which theoretically targets a much more niche audience. According to Nielsen, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network streamed 176 million videos in April, an increase of 16 percent versus the same month in 2008.
[the article was originally published at http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/local-broadcast/e3id8b91cde574aee6561378e0eb5ff80bb]
Those are just a few of the findings in the latest VideoCensus report issued by Nielsen Online. For example, in April, Hulu streamed over 373 million videos, a whopping increase of 490 percent versus the same month last year. According to Nielsen’s analysis, a big chunk of that growth can be attributed to adults 35 to 49, who make up 30 percent of the site’s audience. In the past six months Nielsen found that demo’s time spent per viewer increased by 154 percent to 416 minutes per month on Hulu. That minutes-per-month figure is 10 percent larger than any other age group found on the site—indicating that the 35-plus crowd is drawn to Hulu’s collection of longer-form content—much of which is sourced from TV.
However, to keep things in perspective, even as Hulu soars, YouTube is hardly shrinking in its wake. The Google-owned video site saw its total volume of streams climb by 36 percent in April to nearly 5.5 billion videos compared to the same period last year. That’s almost 15 times as many videos as Hulu streamed last month. The 35 to 49 crowd also spent three times as much time on YouTube as they did on Hulu (nearly 3 billion minutes versus less than 1 billion).
Meanwhile, Fox Interactive Media (FIM), which includes social networking giant MySpace, is quickly losing its stature among the top Web video players. FIM properties generated 201 million streams in April, representing a slide of 39 percent year over year (and just 54 percent of Hulu’s video volume). That places FIM behind Yahoo, which delivered 203 million streams, a decline of 8 percent versus last year for the portal.
Gaining ground on FIM is MTV Network’s Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network, which theoretically targets a much more niche audience. According to Nielsen, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network streamed 176 million videos in April, an increase of 16 percent versus the same month in 2008.
[the article was originally published at http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/local-broadcast/e3id8b91cde574aee6561378e0eb5ff80bb]
Is Paid Subscriptions, the Next Great Trend In Online Advertising?
As respected online publications such as Salon.com, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal removed all or most of their paid subscription models over the course of the decade, conventional wisdom formed that holding print content intended for a mainstream audience behind a pay wall was a noble but failed experiment.
But are paid subscriptions on the Internet poised to make a comeback, albeit in a different form?
There are several standard ways to make money in the highly competitive online publishing space. The dominant one for years has been free content supported by advertising, but the massive amount of supply (even of the high-quality stuff) coupled with a worldwide recession have pushed down rates that advertisers are willing to pay for ad space, squeezing profit margins for most online publishers.
TechCrunch’s MG Siegler points out a not-so-little secret about online display ads: most people couldn’t care less about them:
The web is increasingly filling up with ads. Many sites, including this one, have a bunch of them all around with the hopes that you’ll find one relevant to you, and click on it. Of course, most of you don’t. And if you do, it may be by accident.
While there are a number of other ways to make money at the online content game, such as using content to sell products and services, there are a few factors at play that could pave the way for online paid subscriptions to make major headway over the next few years.
An Anti-ad Network?
Siegler discussed online advertising while covering Contenture, an “anti-ad network” that allows publishers to group themselves together with the idea that Contenture members can pay a subscription fee to gain access to a group of member sites that have the ads removed.
Think about what the future of online browsing might look like when you take this idea to scale. For example, what if you could one day pay Contenture (or Facebook Connect, perhaps) $5 a month — a fee I’m grabbing out of the ether — with the blessed result of being able to visit thousands of high-quality web sites, absolutely ad-free? That could theoretically provide both an important revenue stream for publishers while improving the user experience at the same time.
Subscriptions For Mobile Content
Amazon, with its handheld content reader Kindle, is steadily moving forward — using a similar strategy as Apple in terms of monetizing the sale and distribution of MP3s to iPod devices — with the creation of a massive and sustainable business in getting people to pay for digital content.
While the Kindle is best known for selling books available from the Amazon.com catalog, there’s a growing number of magazine, newspaper and blog subscriptions that can be paid for using an existing Amazon account. Importantly, the Kindle is “training” a mainstream marketplace to pay for digital content, including a subscription component.
While an announcement on Wednesday (again covered by Siegler on TechCrunch) that Amazon is opening all blogs to become part of the Kindle Publishing for Blogs Beta program was not front-page news, it could be another notable step toward building the importance of online subscriptions for online publishers.
Consider, too, that the Kindle’s forthcoming DX release, with its 9.7-inch screen, has the opportunity to further challenge both the computer monitor and print for the attention of readers across the planet. Therefore “training” people to pay for content in the form of subscriptions on the Kindle may have vast repercussions for the future of digital content.
[the article was originally published at http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2009/05/14/14gigaom-paid-subscriptions-the-next-great-trend-in-online-10572.html]
But are paid subscriptions on the Internet poised to make a comeback, albeit in a different form?
There are several standard ways to make money in the highly competitive online publishing space. The dominant one for years has been free content supported by advertising, but the massive amount of supply (even of the high-quality stuff) coupled with a worldwide recession have pushed down rates that advertisers are willing to pay for ad space, squeezing profit margins for most online publishers.
TechCrunch’s MG Siegler points out a not-so-little secret about online display ads: most people couldn’t care less about them:
The web is increasingly filling up with ads. Many sites, including this one, have a bunch of them all around with the hopes that you’ll find one relevant to you, and click on it. Of course, most of you don’t. And if you do, it may be by accident.
While there are a number of other ways to make money at the online content game, such as using content to sell products and services, there are a few factors at play that could pave the way for online paid subscriptions to make major headway over the next few years.
An Anti-ad Network?
Siegler discussed online advertising while covering Contenture, an “anti-ad network” that allows publishers to group themselves together with the idea that Contenture members can pay a subscription fee to gain access to a group of member sites that have the ads removed.
Think about what the future of online browsing might look like when you take this idea to scale. For example, what if you could one day pay Contenture (or Facebook Connect, perhaps) $5 a month — a fee I’m grabbing out of the ether — with the blessed result of being able to visit thousands of high-quality web sites, absolutely ad-free? That could theoretically provide both an important revenue stream for publishers while improving the user experience at the same time.
Subscriptions For Mobile Content
Amazon, with its handheld content reader Kindle, is steadily moving forward — using a similar strategy as Apple in terms of monetizing the sale and distribution of MP3s to iPod devices — with the creation of a massive and sustainable business in getting people to pay for digital content.
While the Kindle is best known for selling books available from the Amazon.com catalog, there’s a growing number of magazine, newspaper and blog subscriptions that can be paid for using an existing Amazon account. Importantly, the Kindle is “training” a mainstream marketplace to pay for digital content, including a subscription component.
While an announcement on Wednesday (again covered by Siegler on TechCrunch) that Amazon is opening all blogs to become part of the Kindle Publishing for Blogs Beta program was not front-page news, it could be another notable step toward building the importance of online subscriptions for online publishers.
Consider, too, that the Kindle’s forthcoming DX release, with its 9.7-inch screen, has the opportunity to further challenge both the computer monitor and print for the attention of readers across the planet. Therefore “training” people to pay for content in the form of subscriptions on the Kindle may have vast repercussions for the future of digital content.
[the article was originally published at http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2009/05/14/14gigaom-paid-subscriptions-the-next-great-trend-in-online-10572.html]
Google eases trademark restrictions
Google Inc is lifting restrictions on the use of trademarked terms in its U.S. online advertising system, a move that could increase friction between the Internet giant and brand owners.
The new policy will allow businesses to place trademarked terms directly in the copy of text advertisements that run in the U.S. starting next month, the company announced in a blog post on Thursday.
The move, which Google said will improve the quality of its advertisements, comes as advertisers have begun bidding less money for the individual search terms that their ads appear alongside and as Google's revenue growth slows in the dismal economic climate.
Until now, Google has forbidden companies from placing trademarked terms in their advertising copy unless they owned the trademark or had explicit permission from the trademark owners.
That policy was the equivalent of a supermarket promotion in a Sunday newspaper that only listed generic products like "discount cola" instead of the actual products for sale, Google said in its blog post on Thursday.
The new policy will allow resellers and informational Web sites to use trademarked terms in their copy in certain situations without seeking permission from the trademark owners.
The move represents the second recent loosening of Google's policies on trademark use. Earlier this month, Google said it would allow companies in 190 countries outside the US to bid on trademarked keywords that act as the triggers for their own advertisements.
Google is also facing new legal challenges from trademark owners.
On Monday, Firepond, a Texas software company, filed a trademark infringement suit against Google seeking class action status for all Texas trademark owners.
Brand owners have historically had serious concerns about Google's policy with regards to trademarks, said Eric Goldman, Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law.
Google's latest policy change is "kind of like pouring gasoline on the fire," he said.
The change may help consumers better understand sponsored search results, by allowing the advertiser to reference trademarks in their marketing pitches, Goldman said. But he predicted that the change could spark more legal challenges.
Google Senior Trademark Counsel Terri Chen acknowledged some people might be unhappy with the change, but she said she believed the ads would be well-received overall.
Chen said the policy was well-established legal principle in the US. Google is changing the policy now, she said, because it was more comfortable it had a process in place to monitor situations that don't comply with the new policy.
[the article was originally published at http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE54B6R020090515]
The new policy will allow businesses to place trademarked terms directly in the copy of text advertisements that run in the U.S. starting next month, the company announced in a blog post on Thursday.
The move, which Google said will improve the quality of its advertisements, comes as advertisers have begun bidding less money for the individual search terms that their ads appear alongside and as Google's revenue growth slows in the dismal economic climate.
Until now, Google has forbidden companies from placing trademarked terms in their advertising copy unless they owned the trademark or had explicit permission from the trademark owners.
That policy was the equivalent of a supermarket promotion in a Sunday newspaper that only listed generic products like "discount cola" instead of the actual products for sale, Google said in its blog post on Thursday.
The new policy will allow resellers and informational Web sites to use trademarked terms in their copy in certain situations without seeking permission from the trademark owners.
The move represents the second recent loosening of Google's policies on trademark use. Earlier this month, Google said it would allow companies in 190 countries outside the US to bid on trademarked keywords that act as the triggers for their own advertisements.
Google is also facing new legal challenges from trademark owners.
On Monday, Firepond, a Texas software company, filed a trademark infringement suit against Google seeking class action status for all Texas trademark owners.
Brand owners have historically had serious concerns about Google's policy with regards to trademarks, said Eric Goldman, Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law.
Google's latest policy change is "kind of like pouring gasoline on the fire," he said.
The change may help consumers better understand sponsored search results, by allowing the advertiser to reference trademarks in their marketing pitches, Goldman said. But he predicted that the change could spark more legal challenges.
Google Senior Trademark Counsel Terri Chen acknowledged some people might be unhappy with the change, but she said she believed the ads would be well-received overall.
Chen said the policy was well-established legal principle in the US. Google is changing the policy now, she said, because it was more comfortable it had a process in place to monitor situations that don't comply with the new policy.
[the article was originally published at http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE54B6R020090515]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
