Publishers might be offering more aggressive iPad subscription discounts if it weren’t for factors like the recent recession, said Terry Snow, CEO of Bonnier. “If this were 2005, you might find everyone a little more aggressive on single-copy prices and subscription prices,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Let’s be careful on our new venture not to price ourselves too low to have a business model.’”

Meanwhile, some good arguments have been made about why that price will be a lot lower.

So in my view, there are three main reasons we see the pricing we do:

• “OK boys, don’t blow it again. We screwed ourselves with free content on the web, it looks like people will pay for apps, let’s get us some of that revenue. Oh, and let’s start high because those nitwits will probably pay, and if they don’t we can drop it later. And advertising, well…”
• “We’ve made advertising on the web really suck – it’s ineffective, lives in ad ghettos, and most people ignore it except for the chain-smoking, lottery ticket buying, slots playing 0.01% who click on them. How can we have faith that our ad sales people will be able to articulate why in app ads are way better, better even than print, and should cost as much as print? And how do we stop marketers from measuring the effectiveness of their ads by, well, whatever they can measure, relevant or not? Better charge readers a lot in case advertising doesn’t work out.”
• “Man it takes a lot of resources to build one of these app things. Every time we do it it’s like starting from scratch. It’s really expensive – we better charge a lot.”

I’ll call the first reason price experimentation. It’s a good thing to do, as long as you don’t ruin your market by going too high, which we must be close to. I don’t know for certain that the third point is true, but reports would suggest that. The Wired app weighed in at 500 MB, perhaps largely because it’s a bunch of images. This is not sustainable. Publishers will have to create flexible templates that can be reused because otherwise yes, it’s going to cost a lot for each issue.

Image via Wikipedia

It’s the second point, though, where I think publishers are selling themselves, and the device, short. On the iPad, ads are exciting and glamorous again which also means they are way more effective than online. They can contain beautiful video and graphics, allow e-commerce in the ad, and provide an experience only dreamed of in print, much less online. The ABC has begun counting publishers’ apps as part of their print circulation, meaning that app ads are being priced like print ads – a very good thing. Ultimately, quality publishing is more dependent on advertising (or some other brand revenue source) than subscriptions. As I’ve said before, subscriptions are no silver bullet and while I think publishers should experiment with charging, they’d be better off spending most of their time redefining the advertising model.

‘Search is not where it’s at’ on phones, he said. ‘People are not searching on a mobile device like they are on the desktop.’

A Google spokesman responded with some stats about the growth of mobile search, none of which really addressed the point. Intuitively Jobs seems to be correct so, if he is, what are the implications?

In the last website redesign I did, we were keenly aware that Google had become the web’s homepage and that users dipped into the interior of our site for a story and then backed out to a search results page. This means that we could no longer count on our audience entering the site from our homepage and had to try to keep search engine visitors by some means found on interior pages. Search engines are now homepages and site homepages are becoming increasingly marginalized.

Now look at mobile. People don’t use search engines the same way. On a smart phone they go to an app that will solve their current problem. Many of these apps, of course, are search based, but that search is typically controlled within the app. Some examples are Yelp, Siri, Fandango, and Shazam – very useful search based apps, but controlled. On mobile devices, and now the iPad, product and brand are regaining the value they once had, but which was stripped away by search engines. For many pundits, this is cause for great consternation, but they forget one important thing – people want to be led.

People want to be led for a variety of reasons – lack of expertise, time prioritization, timidity, ignorance  – but we all sooner or later reach the point where we think, “Good heavens, just get me to the good stuff!” We’ve been through the phase where to avoid being told, “You just don’t get it,” everyone had to praise the chaos of crowd sourced news, RSS readers, and open source everything. In each of these cases, and many others, companies emerged to make sense of the chaos and bring people products and information they didn’t have to create or curate themselves. To lead users to the good stuff. Crowd sourced information and design, user generated content, and open source software will continue to be critically important components of our world, but there is also room for products that do more of the work for us. For any given product or service, most users don’t have the desire or skills to be creators, leaving the largest market open to those brands who are able to lead people to the good stuff. People who want this leadership aren’t losers who “don’t get it,” they simply have different priorities. Maybe the guy who works all day on open source code just can’t be bothered to cull the web for his favorite RSS feeds so he just goes to NYT.com for his news.

So back to mobile. Apple understands that people want to be led. Their closed systems bother me, but I still buy their products, and so do a lot of people so it’s awfully hard to criticize their strategy. For the rest of us, this is an opportunity to create and leverage brands in the digital world. With that comes the necessity of building a great product, but the potential is there. To be sure, this isn’t a reversion to some glorious time in the past, it’s simply another evolution of our world. We don’t know exactly how it will play out, and we know it will continue to evolve, but right now, there is an opportunity to be seized.

• The iPad is important because it provides a strong evolutionary and competitive push. Other e-reader manufacturers will soon catch up to the iPad’s features and the race will be on. The move beyond dully formatted and dreary black and white readers will begin a fast moving cycle of innovation that leads to the second point…
• iPad like devices will give new life to quality content not because it will facilitate consumer subscriptions, but because it will bring back excitement and glamor to brand advertising. Exciting, glamorous advertising is premium advertising which is what is necessary for quality content to thrive.

Just as the buzz surrounding “content engines” seemed to suggest all was lost for well-written, intelligent, long-form content, the evolving e-reader platform may be just what is needed for a resurrection.

You can find the podcast here.

The presidential campaign of 2008 broke new ground in the candidates’ use of the Internet and social media for message delivery, organizing, and fundraising, and this book explores not only how it was done then, but how it will be done in the future. As Michael Bassik of Air America says on the cover, it’s the “…de facto bible for candidates, consultants and just about anyone interested in the Internet-driven, citizen-powered politics…”

The book is available online at Powell’s Books.

So maybe this is one of my pet peeves, but unless you’re Frank Perdue, your CEO starring spot is awful. What these ads do is remind people how soft and flabby, and country club looking, corporate CEOs are. And how if they’re not wearing suits, they’re wearing suits with no ties (a truly ridiculous look if there ever was one). They’re usually horrible actors giving you the feeling you’re driving by a wreck on the side of the road that you just can’t look away from. When I see these ads, I can’t help but act out the marketing meeting in which it was decided that the CEO should star: “Yeah boss, that’s a great idea! You’d be great in that ad!”

One of the CEO ads Stevenson analyzes is the GM spot starring CEO Ed Whitacre. While admitting that Whitacre is “plainspoken, unapologetically uncharismatic,” he decides that “The ad is akin to a calm retail manager emerging from the back of the store to soothe a frustrated customer.” I guess, if the retail store is the Lansing Country Club gift shop. I have no idea what he’s saying because I can’t take my eyes off every little tick and eccentricity that Whitacre exhibits. The way his lips move when he talks, the way he carries his arms when he walks, and those odd glasses. Why does he snap his fingers once during his walk through the set? He can’t possibly be so strange in real life, can he?

Here in San Diego, my old employer, the Union-Tribune, is using the new publisher in radio ads. Yup, I’m holding my breath for the TV version!

(In case you missed it, here’s the GM spot.)

If news organizations have any chance at charging for content it’s with a freemium model, and they now have the means to launch it on the leading mobile platform. While I’m skeptical of the viability of the paid model and the magnitude of the impact even if it’s successful, mobile must be a key component of any attempt.

(So I say again, isn’t it time to stop threatening and just go paid? We’ve been hearing all year about how News Corp is poised to begin charging for content – just do it already! If the industry really believes it’s the future, launching paid content is the only way to prove it.)

Also, doesn’t this make e-readers less attractive to news organizations? Why would a content consumer want to buy a separate device to consume that content on the go? E-readers may be the better choice for long-form content such as text books, but for news, I don’t see it. I can hear the “small screen” complaints now, but get over it, this isn’t newspaper delivery, it’s news delivery.

Just another reason for Hearst to rethink that e-reader launch.

Dylan F. Tweney just published an article on Wired.com suggesting that Net Neutrality may not be all it’s cracked up to be and will likely result in the end of all-you-can-eat Internet access. I’ll leave it to you to read his arguments (and they are persuasive), and will instead point out the comments following the article. Some quotes:

• “What world are you living in?”
• “I’m starting to wonder if Wired has a telecom shill here..”
• “THE WAR IS ON FOR THE WEB!!!!!! HERE COMES ANOTHER REVOLUTION.”
• “So which ISP paid you to write it?”
• “So was it Comcast or Verizon who paid you to post this article? Maybe both?”
• “Nice snow job.”
• “This is such a great example of a paid article! I love it!”
• “THIS ARTICLE IS BUNK!”
• “ROTFL!! this article is biased…. right winger…”
• “Thou hast beshamed thy family name and homeland; begone from us henceforth and dwindle in the land of Cowardly Poopybutts whence thou dost belong-ed! Sink me!”

You get the idea. While not true of every hostile commenter, many start with the assumption that Tweney couldn’t possibly actually believe what he wrote, or that he did some research and came to his conclusions, but that he must be in the pay of some nefarious non-believing forces.

My aim here isn’t to argue against government imposed “net neutrality,” but rather to point out that we are verging on religion. Once we have a religion, discussion, analysis, and inquiry stop, and are replaced with blind obedience. For people who are advocating a “free and open Internet,” their minds are closing rapidly.