A BREWING STORM IN THE HORIZON FOR DIGITAL CONTENT


As the number of people in the world gain access to smartphones and tablets, more and more people are also moving to digital media as their primary source of content and information. In the recent years, we have seen the rise in popularity of ebooks/ereader which has caused a tremendous amount of strain on the traditional publishing business. Recently we have seen major news organizations move to providing digital content accessible through smartphones or tablets. This trend is not showing any signs of slowing down in the near future and big media organizations know this- that is why we are seeing a trend towards monetization.
Currently most big names (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Economist, etc) run on a very straight forward model- you download their free app, get access to a limited number of articles and if you want full access you pay for subscription. This is their business model and this is how they make their money. In fact some analysts say that digital subscription revenue will start to become a major growth engine in the coming years.
Another model being followed in the market is the model used by The Huffington Post- you download their free app and get access to free content. So how do they make money? Thru ad revenues. Since their content is free, the idea is that it attracts a lot of reader/subscribers and thus a captured market for advertisers. For now the Huffington Post digital app is not crowded with ads- which is good- although some articles require you to open their website to view the full story (this time you see ad banners).
There is a growing debate today on which model will work best for both the content producers and the content consumers. My personal take? Its kind of a hard question to answer. To me it all boils down to my User Experience. If a free app is able to provide me with engaging content while keeping ad banners impact on my experience to a minimum- well and good. However based on my experience most ad dependent content providers have not been able to find that sweet spot. The model being used by The Huffington post is so far the best model for me- so far I am able to tollerate the idea of having to open the full website for certain articles. Paid subscription isn’t that bad either. The biggest advantage I see about content from paid subscriptions is that they usually have more in-depth content available- mainly due to the funding available in scooping these big stories. They still contain ads but they are embedded on the article themselves and never interfere with the user experience (some even add to the experience the way Wired Magazine uses interactive ads on their iPad editions)

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