Digital trends for publishers – perspectives from Israel

During the Digital Innovators’ Summit in Berlin, Daniel Cohen, Partner, Gemini Fund briefly covered the Israel startup environment and some of the current trends he is seeing as it relates to new startups and innovation.

Number of investments in startups in Israel rises very quickly. The country becomes a strong startup hub. Just like all over the world, the move to digital media with strong technology focus can be also seen in Israel.

Key trends:

• publishers are becoming brands
• video, video, video
• search for new monetization methods: e-commerce, new forms of advertising, better targeting
• personalization
• growing value of the creative

Video is the new wave: low cost to produce, rising generation is much happier to consume video than text.

Tablets are also a great area of interests due to their beautiful UI and algorithmic content aggregation, what is nothing else but social, personal, and collaborative filtering.

ialbums is an example of an Israeli application for tablets. It works in a similar way to Flipboard, but it aggregates content from different music albums: pictures, lyrics etc. It aggregates the content from the publishers to the final user. iAlbums is a cool app showing useful and nerdy facts about the artists and music users listen to.

Content discovery and recommendations from Israel:

• also algorithmics but focused on site
• news videos movies
• new type of revenue stream
• publishers are advertisers and advertisers are publishers
• improves metrics.

Example – Outbrain application, very strong in US.  It is helping readers discover interesting content.

Smart TV is the next big trend in Israel. They are waiting for Apple TV, although the iPad already paved the way. Unlike iPad, the big CE players have a lot to lose (and they are not great at SW). The TV is going to be something like a big iPad on users’ wall.

Appside is a good example of a TV app. It works like an appstore, but consists of videos and TV content. At the moment it has mainly games now but sports and other publisher content will follow.

Video and video advertising are the final big trends. Everything in Israeli digital media is moving to video. Automatic video creation / edition makes it possible. There are new types of video ads: overlay, personalization, in-scene. Simultaneously aggregation of all trends is noticeable: iPad, smart TV, recommendations.

Example of an application: eyeview

Determining and monetizing the audiences

Audience is publishers’ most valuable asset – and they want to monetize this audience yourself, rather than letting others reap the benefits. Software services and private ad exchanges can help manage and safeguard your precious data and optimize the monetization of the audience. Delegates of the Digital Innovators’ Summit in Berlin could learn about it on the second day of the conference.

Ben Barokas is the President & Co-Founder of AdMeld, USA

What do publishers do in order to take advantage of all the strategies advertisers put into place.

About AdMeld:

• the only SSP founded by publishing veterans
• more than 500 premium publishing clients
• 45 billion transactions per month
• more than 120 team members worldwide
• just acquired by Google

They are serving the world’s top publishers. In order to understand what AdMeld is all about, you should watch this video:

This is how the narrative of advertising market looked like before:

• 2000 – ad networks emerge. Created a large marketed by providing advertising solutions to advertisers.
• In 2007 the ad network daisy chain arrived. It brought: sub-optimal revenues, and extreme labor intensivity. It was also difficult to integrate into new networks.
• 2007-mid 2009 – ad network optimisation
• mid 2009 late 2010 – RTB, data and the SSP.
• late 2010 – late 2011 private exchange
• Since 2011 it is time for real time unified auction.

We are witnessing a dramatic growth of programmatic buying. Publishers need to have an infrastructure that can help them take advantage of those revenues.

Audience analytics for publishers:

• See how your audience looks like from the buers’ perspective
• audience analytics powered by top 3rd party data providers
• see what individual RTB (real time bidding) buyers and advertisers are biddin on specific audience segments
• Execute existing direct sold opportunities, find new ones
• deliver audience segments already sold by your team
• create and deliver new inventory packages

Value of private exchange inventory: premium brand-safe content, targeted impressions, dynamic controls.

What makes Admeld private exchange unique:

• ability to deliver programmatic advertising in brand safe environments across premium publishers. Designed for advertisers to directly engage with publishers.
• exclusive advertiser-to-publisher inventory access to the most sought after highly engaged audiences

AdX and Admeld are integrating to help publishers harness more demand and foster more competition for inventory than other offerings.

As a publishing community we need to be much more data centric.

Moving forward requires:

• importance of hight-touch services
• importance of traditional yield management
• enhanced controls

Gordon McLeod is the President of Krux, USA

Publishing in a data driven world

Krux helps publishers detect and prevent skimming and theft of consumer cookie data. They make web pages faster and website managers more efficient. Krux helps publishers representing over 200 million users worldwide create more valuable advertising, more relevant content, and more effective commerce.

All media are becoming addressable , marketers demand targeting and now value it over placement and price. As a result data-driven, audience-focused operators dominate the display market (the big 4 from day one).

There has been a seismic shift in digital sales: from direct to indirect, from content and context to audience targets.

The good news is that publishers’ data is very valuable. Bad news: others are taking advantage of it at publishers’ expense.

Here’s what Krux found out:

• 200% increase in collection volume per publisher page since 2010
• 82% of all data collection on publisher sites is conducted by 3rd parties
• 70% of that cactivity was ushered to the page by someone other than the publisher
• What does it lead to: data leakage, competitive products from your own data, slower page loads, privacy risk

The data driven future: every publisher’s next opportunity resides at the intersection of revenue and privacy. As far as revenues are concerned the key is to take advantage of horizontal and vertical audiences of scale. The revenues are: ad sales, commerce and subscription revenues fund products, content and audience investments. Privacy is based upon understanding your users, protecting their privacy and preferences, primacy of 1st party activity and self-regulation.

All publishers must reestablish their identity, make the most of consumer access, and invest in a new class of infrastructure:
1. Market identity:

• brand content, environment, and reach matter more than ever
• but only a truly differentiated gateway role will ensure that publishers survive and thrive

2. Consumer privacy:

• trusted consumer relationships are your true asset and your business model must be premised on privacy and preference
• deliver more valuable web experiences that are always cool and never creepy, and profits will surely follow

3. Business infrastructure:

• cloud scale and big data flexibilitywhat were differentiators are table stakes today – media and technology are collapsing on one another
• embrace new models of collection and connection, and apply new analytic and algorithmic techniques with the help of the machines.

So the publishers should take defensive steps to reassert control over your core audience and media assets.

Close the back door, and:

• monitor and audit all data collection
• assert your privacy policy
• assess existing relationships (short term benefits and long term costs)

Interactive advertising and marketing by Dow Jones and Serviceplan

Selling online advertising inventory at a decent rate is still a challenge. Publishers need to create attractive offerings and be pro-active in selling these. Participants of the Digital Innovators’ Summit in Berlin could listen to different industry perspectives on ways publishers can increase revenue by providing advertising and marketing products and services that advertisers want.

Andy Seibert is the President of Dow Jones Content Lab & SmartMoney, USA.

Revenue for Dow Jones has to be incremental, efficient, profitable, repeatable. With right audience and right sales people publishers will be able to convince the advertisers to spend money on their media.

Dow Jones is a big content company 2100 editorial people, 59 countries. They produce 19 000 pieces a day of content for the integrated platforms, distributed into various channels.

Lines of Dow Jones’ business:

• B2B: Dow Jones Newswire, Factiva
• B2C: WSJ, Barron’s, AllThingsD, SmartMoney, MarketWatch
• Custom Content: Content Lab

Content Lab: what they do is look across all great things around all media they have, and aggregate and repackage it. They develop integrated marketing programs across a variety of channels: print, web, mobile, social, video, iPad and tablet apps. They apply the best practices of their sister divisions – which are among the world’s strongest brands, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, SmartMoney and MarketWatch – to their clients’ custom programs.

The question was whether they can turn those talents into revenue generating activities? They are known for topic expertise and editorial quality. They are also known for innovation.

Main objective was to create programme to meet client’s objective. Client’s content + new custom content + branded content. In other words, they produce communications in a variety of formats. They produce for their clients: e-newsletters, print newsletters, videos, infographics, booklets, and seminars.

Dow Jones quickly became a leader in on-demand publishing by:

• using customer data to create relevant communications
• seamlessly integrated program across print, electronic, and online distribution channels
• producing communications for over 8000 client customers and 10 million employees
• improving result 10-30%
• delivering differentiation among competitors

Tips for publisher: ask the right questions, start with a proven successful process, assure quality, and be unique.

Florian Haller is the CEO of Serviceplan, Germany.

Serviceplan, MediaPlus and Plan.net work together as one house of communication (communication agency). They are specialists in areas of 360 d. campaigns, political campaigns, health&marketing, public relations, sponsorships, sales marketing, events, and corporate reputation.

Commumication agencies need innovative and effective access to the target groups. Here is what Florian Haller understands by “innovative and effective”:

1. Innovative and effective means targeted. Strong believers in targeting as a media channel of the future. Advertising should match users’ interests.
2. Innovative and effective means relevant. Relevant in this context is learning about users and at the same changing the advertising offer towards the users.
3. Innovative and effective means impactful. Advertising needs to have a measurable effect on the users/readers.
4. Innovative and effective means involving. Advertising agencies and content producers must cooperate on a much closer level. This means bringing special solutions for the advertisers: communities, games, events, and so on.
5. Innovative and effective means convergent. Interested in existing on as many platforms as possible, both online and offline.
6. Innovative and effective means measurable. Internet is the most measurable media among all platforms available: branding effect, response rate, readership, ROI – everything in Internet is measurable.

Leveraging social media in newsmedia companies

The reach and scale of social media continues to grow, but how can publishers profit from this? In this session, publishers provided insights into their strategies and approaches to social media.

Dan Hickey is the SVP, Digital Engagement, Meredith, USA

What matters most to 75 million women: her family, her home, her self.

Meredith is a company that evolved from a custom publishing company to a regular publishing house. Meredith has 45 million unique users monthly and 800 million pageviews.

The digital growth strategies for Meredith are:

• migrating the consumers relationships online
• extending brands across the web
• embracing social media
• launching interactive editions

Meredith produces many mobile apps, each produced by focusing on what individual consumers need. Also its tablet editions get a lot of attention.

• Meredith understands how important for publishers is the migration to digital. Today’s consumer uses technology to enhance every aspect of his/her life by:
• searching to rapidly find information, education, and entertainment
• accesing information through mobile, wherever he/she is
• time shifting and watching web video
• comparing shopping online offers to find bargains, discounts, offers, deals, and services

All of that creates possibilities for Meredith brands to enhance their value proposition to advertisers and consumers.

Social has achieved a critical mass of users and represents an opportunity for them to accelerate their site scale and revenue growth. Social media have a dual impact on traffic. Not only can they result in direct traffic to the sites, but they can also impact the natural search ranking signicantly.

The majority of advertising requests are calling for a major push on building a brands Facebook presence. Having a strong Facebook presence, and the skills to execute social campaigns, it will allow publishers to win more proposals.

And while social commerce is small today, it is clear that in the nearest future social will play a significant role in how commerce is done on the web. Having a strong social presence will put publishers in the position to capture future commerce revenue.

Social media are an opportunity to scale and diversify for publishers. It is as important as email and search discoverability of the content online. It is an opportunity to accelerate the growth through further expansion in social. Finally, it diversifies the traffic composition while accelerationg publishers’ ability to scale.

Meredith has some great social media achievements it can be proud of. Among them there are:

• 2,3 million Facebook fans (total)
• 760 thousand Twitter followers (total)
• Highest sources of social traffic aggregated across sites

Engagement strategies:

• Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm is determining how many of your fans will actually see your posts through the default “Top News” view
• Every post or piece of content is an object. Every object has edges (comment, like, tag, share, click, etc.). Edges that require more user effort rank higher:
• affinity – between user and edge creator
• weight – weight for edge type
• relevancy – time decay factor

The EdgeRank can be checked anytime at edgerankchecker.com which is the unofficial site for Edge Rank scoring.

The engagement stratefy should include a variety od post-types to maximize fans interaction, the Edge Rank, and opportunity for fans to see your posts. How should a

post strategy look like?:

• plan ahead and determine frequency od posting, post types, general schedule
• alter the plan if something relevant/newsy comes in
• consider using a scheduling tool for nights and weekends, if you are not able to post at those times.

1. Social is becoming as important as email and search
2. It is an opportunity to expand the growth by further expansion to social
3. it further diversifies the traffic composition while accelerating the ability to scale

Svida Alisjahbana is the CEO of Femina Group, Indonesia

Facebook is not yet major in Indonesia. 43 million users in Asia visit Facebook daily. Twitter is no. 1 social media site in Asia with 19 millionusers.

Market has changed:

• everything is happening in real time
• consumer is getting critical

Editor in chief in Femina Group has become Chief Community Officer. His/her responsibility is to create a content that can be played with the community. Not only is all media becoming digital. All media is becoming social.

The strategy is all about: content – community – channel

The audience is growing, but all in all those are growing communities.

Social media is very important to Femina Group. If it was once said thay content is king, in that case the conversation is kingdom.

Tanya Cordrey is the Director of Development in Guardian, UK Guardian has created a new type of app, an embedded app to show other facebook users what we are reading.

There were 3 reasons behind why they did it:
1. they could do this quickly and cheaply
2. they could re-embrace the idea of experimenting within Facebook
3. it was an idea of a new acquisition channel

35.000 people download Guardian app on Facebook daily. What is very interesting, the most interested demographic group is 18-24 year olds.

At first it was very UK-centric. As it has grown, the audience became much more global. From November 2011 the trend has changed, and UK traffic is now smaller than global.

Guardian Facebook Social News App readers are young who don’t read newspapers, 54% 24y and under. Over 700k users.

Digital gives publishers something that print never did – real time data. In future, Guardian may try new features/functionality on Facebook before introducing to their own properties.

This app was just an experiment – they did not know what to expect.

Key takeaways:
Facebook is a sandbox for innovation
Facebook has a high speed of learning
Facebook gives ability to attract new readers

International digital growth strategies for Axel Springer

Growth can be pursued in a number of different ways, but one of the most challenging and lucrative ways is expanding business into other countries. Digital makes it easier to reach customers in other countries. Dr. Jens Müffelmann shared his strategies and experiences with expanding their digital business internationally.

Dr. Jens Müffelmann is the Head of Electronic Media Division, Axel Springer AG, Germany. Internationalization and digitalization have been anchored in the company’s strategy since 2001. They are decisive drivers for the growth of Axel Springer. Extensive investments in digital media since 2008. One investment every 2 weeks for the last 6 years.

At the beginning there was strong issue about German investments, now it’s more international.

4 cases for going international with digital:

1. KaufDA: going highspeed with innovative business model
2. aufeminin.com: growing with a centralized approach /jw/
3. SeLoger utilising expertise for the new growth markets
4. Zanox – expanding from German to European market leader

1. Kauf.da. The business model is the online brochures – they can be researched online but bought offline. It was launched in 2009 and focused on German market at first. December 2011 a subsdiary bonial was launched in France. Now France is the number 1 market for Axel Springer, with strategic relevance and the size of 2 billion Euro.

2. aufeminin shows growing with a centralized approach. It is Europe’s leading women portal, founded in 1999 with headquarters in Paris. Axel Springer axquired it in 2007 with a stake of 82%. Aufeminin is one brand across 13 European countries with 45 million unique visitors.

3. Seloger shows utilizing expertise for the new growth markets. It is a leading real estate portal in France, founded in 1992. Bought by Axel Springer in 2010 with 99,7% stake. It has 4 million unique visitors and listings of 1,1 million. It now expands to market niches and outside France.

4. Zanox is an example of a brand expanding from German to European market leader. Its revenues have grown significantly over the past 4 years outperforming its main European competitor TradeDoubler.

33% of Axel Springer’s revenues are generated abroad. International revenues have grown from 383 million Euro in 2006 to 1 048 million Euros in 2011. Axel Springer is now present in 35 countries, with 25 newspapers and 132 magazines. They have more than 140 online offering and hiring more than 4000 employees. They have grown from no digital revenues in 2006 to 49% digital revenues in 2011. Axel Springer’s vision is to be 50/50 (50% print and 50% digital).

Lessons learnt:

• Do your homework first, then internationalize
• be open, there is just not one mmarket entry strategy
• know the region or know the business. Best, know them both
• think global, act local, and learn
• install a corporate “serve/protect champion”
• expect the unexpected, be flexible
• people, people, people

Developing new revenue streams – Digital Innovators’ Summit

New Revenue Streams were the topic of one of the sessions during the Digital Innovators’ Summit in Berlin. Integrating e-commerce into magazine sites, offering commerce deals with the publisher’s brand on a white label platform, and utilizing social and casual gaming – these are some of the new ways in which publishers are venturing into developing new revenue streams.

Vittorio Veltroni is the General Director of Digital Division in Mondadori (Italy). Today, the customers have many opportunities to inform and entertain themselves. Media, software, web and manufacturing companies should never forget that they all compete for the same scarce resources. Those are:

• time
• trust
• relevance

Publishers must think how they can become relevant, trustworthy and how they can become a habit. An answer to that should lay in strategy that is a mix of brand, content strategy, consistency, and most of all usability and ubiquity.

• The goal of Mondadori is to become a habit, part of the daily flow of their customers’ lives. They have to know their customers, so they can create final products that:
• speak to each and everyone of them
• always intrude on the right conversations
• change with the constant changes in their lives

The marketing of a product must be customer-centric. This means, that product is never complete because of the following reasons:

• users must be able to change it
• distribution platforms and user experiences must change as people shift between devices
• companies have to balance between own voice and entering conversations people care about.

At the same time, the marketing has to change. It must be based on different, live data sets, and it has to have the ability to do the math and see the stories behind the numbers.

Only when there is a trust, there is a possibility to sell the product. Veltroni’s fight is to build relevance and sustain it through the course of time – it can be either a niche, or in a mass market. He does that thrugh:

• Showing the brand (display and co-marketing)
• Endorsing (direct linking)
• Engaging actively (bringing the content to the shop, and testing the brand in sales environment)
• Engulfing (custom shops)
• Energizing (gamification and drive to the store)

The moment to monetize his efforts comes when his voice becomes a part of customers’ everyday life, and he can measure it through social networks.

Key learnings:

• Focus on relevance: time, trust, habit, experience and ubiquity
• Know your customers: data and narratives
• Change your industrial process: the virtuous neverending loop
• Change your skill sets: content creators, data crunchers, and customer narrators.
• You are better off parnering than doing it by yourself
• Diversify your partners: the more data, the richer your narratives

If Facebook has the social graph, Google has the search graph, and Amazon has the commercial graph, our goal is to become the industry who has the relevance graph, and this is the most important API.

Shannon Edwards is the Director Europe in ShopStyle, UK. She spoke about how content and commerce comes together. Generation Y is the starting point for online opportunity. They interact online, share and influence one another. Success is to achieve by perfecting the balancing act between content and commerce. Contextualization is the key here.

Engagement is all about inspiration and imagination. Shopstyle does that through fully interactive shoppable video. They empower the fashion enthusiasts to purchase what they see with just an easy click. Most important those videos are shareable.

The principles of a good online commercial strategy the success means contextually integrating the commerce into quality content. This is what Shopstyle does.

They also create ShopStyle Stylebooks. This is a tool where users can choose products and adjust them. The tool is very popular, as it became an online shopping partner for brands like Elle UK, Elle JP, OK, Handbag, Channel 4.

Shopstyle also knows how to create buzz and build the audience. Thanks to the web service Park & Cube – how to wear they engage fashion bloggers who post their style pictures and bring even more audience. Opportunities are out there, publishers just have to explore them.

Neal Sinno is the Vice President responsible for business development in Arkadium, USA. His area of interests is the game sector which is huge and becomes bigger every year.

Arkadium is a game company, founded in 2001. It has 125 employees, with offices in New York, California and Ukraine. They own all of their individual prospects (300+ games), and served about 154 million games last month.

Their strategy is simple and based on four fillars:

• Build,
• license,
• learn,
• report.

They create games based on popular mechanics, licensing them under various business models. Most of all they watch, learn, and repeat what the’ve learned. The licensing models are based on diverse revenues streams and those have strategic value.

They are finding their partners through:

• ensuring each new partner has the traffic to support games
• taking proactive steps to ensure each partner is racouping their games games investment
• maintaining and growing partnerships with new content, products and services
• growing with their partners – as they grow

Arkadium tries to engage users ann all platforms they want to be engaged, whether it is ofline, online, mobile or social.

In closing:

• Set your goals and build with the assets you have
• mitigate financial risks: leverage licensing models
• reinvest: continue to build new content
• trust the numbers: game analytics will point the way
• wash, rinse, and repeat

How to make content work – in Forbes, Sports Illustrated and nugg.ad

Delegates from Forbes, Sports Illustrated and nugg.ad spoke during the Digital Innovators’ Summit in Berlin about the core of the digital publishing business.

Quality content remains at the heart of the digital publishing business. But how can it be produced in a more cost effective way and be better used to yield more profits for publishers? One publisher has implemented a new formula for generating content that seems to bolster both page views and profitability. Another has found success repurposing content in different channels, media formats and products. And a new technology company will talk about how they help publishers get the most from their content.

Lewis D’Vorkin is the Chief Product Officer, Forbes Media, USA. Forbes.com had 30 million unique users last month, which is a 100% growth year over year. How did they manage to do that?

Forbes has 1000 contributors who produce 300 posts a day. It is a solid ground for publishing about 100 000 posts a year.

Forbes knows that in order to profit, three things must be present:

• quality
• quantity
• variety

Forbes is at the moment an iconic brand power with new cover strategy. Forbes is positioning itself as a magazine with information about people who are changing the world such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates etc.

In digital Forbes.com created a powerful content engine with branded contributors and topic experts. Contributors publish under their names, their responsibility is to build an audience, Forbes gives them tools and support to do that.

The site has evolved. Forbes started with a simple page, stripped to the core. They put a box with number of page views of specific story what became the most

important feedback for content producers. Next thing they did was to put sharing tools, that are scrollable together with an article. Very important is also the social layer: all contributors have social profiles, they are obliged to interact with the readers, comment and so on.

At the end of each article there is a tool showing what the next story is – it allows to elevate the content. After scrolling down, at the end of the article a user sees the latest headlines.

Forbes strategy was based on evolving into a publishing platform for social media enthusiasts. They took special efforts to get rid off the barriers of entry such as registration to interact on Forbes.com.

Forbes strategy is a scalable content model but adopted to the needs of the publisher. It is collected differently, produced differently, distributed differently, presented differently, staffed differently, and paid for differently. All of the contributors earn money on building audience, every month starting from the scratch.

The bigger audience they build, the more money they earn.

Journalism goes social in Forbes. The main traffic sources are growth in social and search.

Forbes is changing not only the publishing, but also advertising. “Ad Voice” is a new relationship with consumers and thought leaders. Forbes becomes a business forum that is inclusive and transparent with everyone interacting with each other.

20-25% Forbes’ traffic comes from smartphones and tablets. They also made a big deal with YouTube, selling advertising both on their own site and YouTube site as well.

In summary, for Forbes the future is now, delivering the content in every way users want, whenever they want it – and this is their secret.

Terry McDonell is the editor of Sports Illustrated, USA. He knows transition in publishing business is not easy. When they started working on a tablet edition, they didn’t even have an iPad to test.

At this time there were 3 cultures inside the organisation:

• executive culture
• editorial culture
• IT culture

The key was to manage to have those three cultures cooperate and find common goals.

Sports illustrated changed the culture of perception of the IT team from problem solving to innovation

Tablet edition is not only a great tool for promoting Sport’s Illustrated content, but to archive it as well. Thousands of pictures are taken every month in Sports Illustrated, and before iPad edition, there was no way to show them all to the readers.

Also, the workflow is of great importance to the publisher, as employees do not enjoy new responsibilities. Luckily for Sports Illustrated, Woodwing came in translating the content onto every platform possible

Stephan Noller is the CEO of nugg.ad, Germany. He spoke about the content targetting as something publishers should definitely focus on in the nearest future.

Content targeting is necessary, as users think that 95% of your website’s content is irrelevant. There are lots of interests, lots of topics, a lot of information on publishers’ sites, making it hard to find the information that really interests the reader.

Content targeting has the goal to show only relevant content to the broad wide of visitors.

Will content targeting be accepted by the users? Yes, because people are getting more and more used to adaptive web content. It is enough to look where Facebook is going with its personalised news feeds.

Users will expect adapting the content to their needs. And publishers should not leave web content personalisation to Facebook or Google.

Nugg.ad is a tool that can create millions of individual sites automatically, it is all based on the right combinations and delivery.

Data knowldege for the content:

• which topics are readers interested in
• who is interested in premium
• where do readers spent most of the time
• how does readership look like, also in the very second

In the effect, publishers get more page views, more ad impressions, and higher reader satisfaction.

What has to be done in order to start thinking about the content targeting:

1. determining users demographics and interests
2. classifying content in order of interests
3. positioning according to interests

Major digital ecosystems and publishers

Veit Siegenheim proved there are 4 companies that dominate today’s internet. The big 4 that have established the global ecosystem are: Google, Apple, Amazon, facebook.

What does this mean for publishers? The big 4 controls major parts of digital economy, with significant impact on publishers. And it’s not over – all of them are extending their role in this ecosystem, Facebook for instance might extend its possibilities to ad network etc.

Some numbers:

• Google and Facebook alone control almost a quarter of worldwide reach (unique visitors) in the Top 100.
• 80% of all delivered smartphones and tablets are run with Apple’s iOs or Google’s Android – Amazon is becoming very active.
• 54% of the global advertising market (SEM, display and mobile, interactive TV) is controlled by the big 4

Global advertising market is oligopoly in hands of the big 4.

5 challenges for publishers:

1. content is king, has to be unique, integrated and well distributed. Importance of high quality content increasing, distribution will become commodity.
2. advertising, ad networks. competettive pressure on marketing of digital and traditional media will increase through innovation and market consolidation
3. strong media brands will become more and more important for successful competition and new business models
4. synergies and cooperation between publishers and common strategies to counter global pressure
5. Infrastructure. Big 4 offer great possibilities to benefit from the infrastructure that they have built

It is too late for cooperation of publishers and common acts against the big4 – many publishers began to negotiate with them individually.

Conclusion:

1. Big 4 will continue to dominate , especially in their core business
2. market position of publishers will improve in commodity areas
3. Direct competition with the big 4 in their core area (e.g. advertising) will be difficult to succeed
4. Critical mass of publishers is probably too small – more co-operations are needed
5. Only strong media brands give orientation and can be a basis for diversification

Noah Samuels from Google was convincing the audience that the role of his company is to help publishers win their fight on the narrowing market.

Google is one of the world’s biggest technology companies but they’re also one of the world’s biggest media companies (YouTube, search, GMail).

As a media company they are facing same challenges as publishers:

• social,
• video (60 hours of content uploaded every 60 seconds on YouTube, 4 billion video views a day),
• mobile (giant rise in mobile search),
• data.

Google’s recommendations for publishers:

1. focus on users (if you have happy and satisfied users, it’s opportunity for them to follow you)
2. open will win (web should stay open, instead of being a locked garden)
3. never fail to fail: open social, wave, buzz. Took lessons from it to build Google Plus.

The entire publishing ecosystem has changed drastically:

• Publishing has fundamentally changed. New consumer behaviour and expectations. New formats and players. New business models and sales channels.
• Advertising has changed: before – limited media capacity, scarce ad inventory, creative board to media, analogue devices Now: constrained choice, passive consumption,high barriers to opt-out
• The game has changed. A publisher’s focus on content and relationship with audience must evolve or risk losing relevance. Today audience is in control, on any device anywhere and anytime.

Google believes in one platform, and suggests that so should publishers. This platform has three goals:

• maximize revenues,
• capture new opportunities,
• improve efficiency

Strategic overview of Future’s digital development

Mark Wood, the CEO of Future (UK) showed during the Digital Innovators’ Summit in Berlin the strategic overview of his company’s digital development.

In today’s fluid business landscape, magazine media companies are confronted by complex decisions about where to invest in order to develop their brands and audiences. Consumers have more choice of both content and platform and are consequently more fickle. Advertisers have more alternatives too, including becoming media brands in their own right. How should a media owner respond? Mark Wood, the CEO of magazine media company Future CEO shares the strategies and approaches of his company.

What Future is doing to become a digital business?. So far they own:

• 80+ magazines
• 70+ iPad editions
• 50+ websites

Future is evolving to digital business.
The revenues from digital are up: 41% growth last quarter what sums up for 17% of total revenues. They have 34 millions unique users per month.

• 55 titles on Apple Newsstand on 12 october 2011, 70+ today,’
• 11 million downloads of Future container apps
• 5 million opt-in to receive their marketing

The challenges all publishers are facing today are:

• print markets decline
• advertising migrates
• how to transition a print business to digital business before print declins blow up the traditional media companies

The strategy for Future is finding a value of niche audiences in a digital world. It is all about building business around high value audiences and engaging passionate audiences. It is always worth to bear in mind that niches are resilient, attractive to advertisers, and global.

Future wants to build a borderless business. Its strategy is:

• produce great content produceds by experts
• gather engaged audiences who are passionate and loyal
• find potential of new audiences worldwide
• show world class digital skills in development, SEO, and publishing

Going global, and engaging new audiences means growing new revenues. Future tries to customize their products first for American market and then go on and see how customization for other markets work.

Revenue model has changed. Before, the brand was built on print newsstand, print advertising, print subscription (traditional). New revenue model adds many new features, such as: licensing and syndication, online advertising, mobile advertising, e-commerce, apps, digital edition sales, paywall content, data revenue, events, affiliate partnerships and video advertising.

There are 2 tracks nowadays to digital future: online and mobile (tablet / smartphones). People expect smartphone websites to be free. On tablets people pay for news, and this is what’s changing the digital world.

Tablet revolution is here:

• iPad and other tablets people are willing to pay for content
• iPads have reinvented the magazines
• 12 October 2011 (rise of Apple’s Newsstand) was the Revolution Day for publishing industry because of multiplying hundred times the volume of sales for magazine publishers

Future believes in its development on Apple’s iPad:

• 70+ Future titles
• over half million sales since launch
• 40% sign up for subscription

T3 is UK’s best selling iPad magazine. Total app downloads reached 300 thousands. Here’s how the application looks like:

T3’s record circulation is 70,5 thousands

The iPad edition is very effective:

• over 4000 users clicked the link for more
• 11800 unique users viewed the cover wrap video

What Future has learnt so far:

• some surprising success stories
• titles need to mean something to target audiences
• 80 percent of sales outside the home market
• biggest markets: US, UK, Germany, France, Australia, China, Korea
• integrated workflow is vital

Future is doing this all without any addtional staff. This is a breakthrough for the publisher. And they are still launching magazines. New ways of launching – prelaunch with blogs, websites, facebook and twitter to build the market before the launch. Every new magazine is a digital brand through websites, tablets, mobile, facebook and twitter.

It’s a culture change – business has to change, and everyone is behind that change. This is not a a magazine business used to look like – this is how magazine business has to look like in order to survive.

Pit Gottschalk: how much transformed is your newsroom? (video)

Pit Gottschalk, Head of CEO Office in Axel Springer (Germany), was one of the speakers at the INMA European Conference in Cascais, Portugal (19-21 October 2011). Watch Pit explain his measurement system of newsroom transformation process.

Pit Gottschalk studied over 50 newspaper newsrooms in Germany and prepared report helping media managers to compare their improvements with other players on the newspaper market. Now, he is rolling out the analysis to other countries. If you would like to be involved in the survey, you can contact CEO Office of Axel Springer in Germany.

Video recorded on INMA European Conference in Cascais, Portugal, 19-21 October 2011. Pit Gottschalk was interviewed by Artur Karda from 112MEDIA – consulting, training and outsourcing for media.