Friday, July 13, 2007
Cannibalisation is dead. Long live multi-platform publishing!
Press Gazette’s excellent Fleet Street 2.0 column by Martin Stabe today finally delivered the decisive blow against Canute-like editors who think that if they put a load of their paper’s content on their website they risk it cannibalising readers of the print edition.
So they take a defensive approach and strictly limit what’s there for free, or at all. If they order the waves not to come too far, they will be controlled, they believe, and all will be well.
Except that it’s not true. Research conducted by academics at City University (see www.pressgazette.co.uk/research for details) has shown that paper’s websites don’t cannibalise readers of the title’s print editions. Quite the reverse – they draw different readers who simply want the content via that medium. So they're adding to your reach, not moving readers from a successfully monetized medium to one which is less profitable.
So they’re allowing readers to segment themselves by delivery platform – something advertisers will probably like as it would allow them to target younger audiences by advertising only on the e-platforms they increasingly predominantly use and not wasting advertising pounds on ads in the print product unless they want to get their message to the demographic who prefer it.
The theory of cannibalisation, the researchers found, was based on the (slightly presumptuous) notion that people stick with a particular news brand regardless of medium. But that proved not to be true.
So what does that mean for editors?
Well, to me, a convert to the marketing view of the world of commerce, it says you must pay more attention to how your readers want your content and stop trying to keep them tethered to your traditional bit of dead tree with last night’s news smeared on it because if you don’t make the news now available to them now via your website, mobile site, text message, podcast, vodcast or whatever other medium suits them best, they will simply go to someone else who will. And then you may well have lost them for good from all your platforms.
This has always been true since significant numbers of readers discovered new media fitted into their lives better, but has been more so since broadband at work and, more recently, at home have made getting content via the Internet faster and more convenient.
Cannibalisation theory is, at long last, dead. Now let’s take serving readers with what they want, the way they want, when they want it seriously.
So they take a defensive approach and strictly limit what’s there for free, or at all. If they order the waves not to come too far, they will be controlled, they believe, and all will be well.
Except that it’s not true. Research conducted by academics at City University (see www.pressgazette.co.uk/research for details) has shown that paper’s websites don’t cannibalise readers of the title’s print editions. Quite the reverse – they draw different readers who simply want the content via that medium. So they're adding to your reach, not moving readers from a successfully monetized medium to one which is less profitable.
So they’re allowing readers to segment themselves by delivery platform – something advertisers will probably like as it would allow them to target younger audiences by advertising only on the e-platforms they increasingly predominantly use and not wasting advertising pounds on ads in the print product unless they want to get their message to the demographic who prefer it.
The theory of cannibalisation, the researchers found, was based on the (slightly presumptuous) notion that people stick with a particular news brand regardless of medium. But that proved not to be true.
So what does that mean for editors?
Well, to me, a convert to the marketing view of the world of commerce, it says you must pay more attention to how your readers want your content and stop trying to keep them tethered to your traditional bit of dead tree with last night’s news smeared on it because if you don’t make the news now available to them now via your website, mobile site, text message, podcast, vodcast or whatever other medium suits them best, they will simply go to someone else who will. And then you may well have lost them for good from all your platforms.
This has always been true since significant numbers of readers discovered new media fitted into their lives better, but has been more so since broadband at work and, more recently, at home have made getting content via the Internet faster and more convenient.
Cannibalisation theory is, at long last, dead. Now let’s take serving readers with what they want, the way they want, when they want it seriously.
Labels: cannibalisation, news papers, websites
