Remember this term: Peer39 explained semantic search, which improves search accuracy by understanding searcher intent and the context within which search terms appear.
The 3 million iPads sold as of June were a major topic of discussion at two conferences this month: The Big Money’s Untethered 2010: Profitable Media in the Tablet Era, and the Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference. Untethered was aimed more directly at book publishers, and its “Future of Book Publishing” panel included publishing head honchos like Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy, HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray, and Perseus CEO David Steinberger. But the session covered no new ground, and perhaps its only real surprise was Murray’s estimate that 40–50% of HarperCollins’s business will be digital within the next five years. Meanwhile, DPAC’s audience and panels contained few familiar faces, and its sessions moved beyond piracy and e-book pricing to provide some refreshingly new takeaways for book publishers.
BUYING REAL SHOES WITH FAKE MONEY. ON FACEBOOK.
Just got around to creating a page for your company on Facebook? Sorry: Fan pages are “very 2009,” said Lisa Marino, CRO of RockYou. Facebook now has over 400 million users sharing over 25 billion pieces of content every month, and publishers must be on top of the really new trends. First, recognize the importance of social gaming—playing games within Facebook. The three most popular games are all made by Zynga: Farmville has over 18 million daily active users, followed by Texas Hold’em Poker (5.5 million daily active users) and Treasure Isle (5.1 million daily active users). Facebook has made a “huge commitment” to social gaming—outsourcing gaming on the platform but aggressively growing it. 17 of the top 20 games are dominated by women. 76% of women play electronic games and most of them are within the “mom demo,” 35–50-year-old women who just happen to control the household pocketbook (and have always been the group that reads and buys the most books). This demographic plays games between two and three times a day, spending up to 20 minutes playing, and is a “captive audience” that brands can work with, Marino said. Furthermore, the affluent and urban are more likely to be on social networks, and the time they spend there is up 82% year on year.
Gamers are willing to engage with brands inside social games, in order to earn the “virtual currency” that allows them to advance. Users can also advance by spending real money—but 97% of social gaming women would rather earn virtual currency. To get it, they accept branded offers (like taking a survey—the most popular option, preferred by 34% of women—watching a video, or downloading a coupon). A 2009 survey from Q Interactive showed that nearly 80% of women playing social games have signed up for offers in exchange for more virtual currency, and 67% of those said they found the offers useful. Marino said the Facebook video ads resulted in a click-through rate in the 0.08-to-0.1% range, a marked improvement over traditional banner ads, which usually have a click-through rate of 0.05% or less.
Facebook has rolled out a “Facebook Credits” pilot program over the last 90 days and is “spending a tremendous amount of effort getting users to be comfortable using virtual currency on the platform” and accustoming them to earn credits by completing tasks like those mentioned above. Brands shouldn’t just think of these credits as in-game virtual currency: Starting in 2011, users will be able to exchange Facebook credits for real products, like shoes, as the Facebook platform will allow inventory uploads. “Getting involved in Facebook credits now will pay off as a strategy down the road,” Marino said.
Companies can engage with the games in other, “non-incentivized” ways as well. RockYou worked on a campaign for Coke inside of the Zoo World game, where users could buy a Coke vending machine for their zoo. Over 2 million vending machines were bought in the first five days of the campaign, and “impression counts for advertisers continue well beyond the flight of the campaign as users keep them in their games,” Marino noted. How about selling a virtual version of a hot new bestseller?
MOBILE > PC
In a panel called “How Do You Make Real Money on Digital Content?” David Mason, SVP, AOL Content Platform, recommended changing the cost structure of content creation. AOL relies on over 40,000 professional freelance writers, photographers, and videographers to create content at a significantly lower cost than if the same were done in-house (plus, as Mason helpfully pointed out, you couldn’t fit 40,000 people in a single office building). But the panel was quickly taken over by discussion of the iPad, a seemingly unavoidable topic these days. Moderator Dave Hendricks, COO of LiveIntent (a company that helps publishers develop engaged audiences on social media platforms), asked panelist Ernie Cormier, CEO of mobile advertising solutions company Nexage, whether Apple or Amazon’s business model is “smarter.” “If you want to take who is on the defense versus who is on the offense as a sign of who’s smarter, Amazon is on the defensive,” said Cormier, pointing to the Kindle’s recent price drop.
Apple is also leading the new transition from content creation for standard broadband internet to content creation for mobile devices, including the iPad (the transition from print to digital is so yesterday). Wired magazine’s iPad edition sold almost exactly the same number of copies in its first month as the print edition. “Does it make sense for businesses to invest in device-specific versions of technology in order to get alternate spending from customers?” Hendricks wondered. Yes, Mason said: “What Wired is doing is the perfect thing to do.”
Mark Weinberg, VP Programming and Product Strategy for Hearst, was crankier. “What Wired did is insane,” he said, calling their app “overly featured and overly expensive” and the iPad itself “a $700 toy.” “Just because people bought [the Wired app] tells you nothing about what the future of that business is going to be. Turning your subscription data over to Apple is not a great model.” What he didn’t mention was that the people buying the Wired app were not necessarily the same people who subscribe to the magazine—and that’s important for book publishers to remember. Creating an app can open up your product to an entirely new audience.
Don’t limit yourself to the iPad, though, cautioned Cormier, who said that publishers could spend the money they’d spend on a single iPad app to reach many other kinds of mobile devices. Within the next year or two, he said, smartphone sales will exceed desktop PC sales, and eventually the total smartphone base will exceed the total computer base. “Make sure your lens is broad enough to take in that whole world out there.” (For more on publishers’ efforts to create mobile content, click here.)
LEGACY MEDIA
“The Next-Generation Digital Content Platforms: Can You Use Just One?” might have been the only session of the day that was primarily about “traditional” (nostalgically referred to as “legacy”) media—i.e., content created primarily for an existing tactile surface. It helped that the panelists were all passionate about their respective media—Doug Carlson, Managing Director of Zinio, about magazines; VP Michael Tamblyn about Kobo; and Barnes & Noble‘s Anthony Astarita about the Nook. Catherine Balsam-Schwaber said iVillage users claim to interact with five separate devices in one day, so it is critical for them to be able to port their content around. “Content should be device-agnostic,” she said. Tamblyn agreed that “your books should be able to follow you.” Carlson noted that Zinio and similar apps allow instant global availability of content. A colleague who runs several ski magazines told Carlson that, while he used to mail those to his subscribers around the world (only 20% of skiers live in the U.S.), now he saves air freight costs—and those subs are receiving their magazine in a timely manner. “You start thinking about a golden age” of publishing, he said.
Tamblyn was interested to see what we would learn about how each device opens up a different book buying audience and how purchase frequency differs between devices and platforms. Balsam-Schwaber mentioned that iVillage is negotiating with publishers on interesting share models that would allow books to be published in the iVillage environment, regardless of device. Nevertheless, Tamblyn noted that content has to be appropriate: “I’m not certain Moby Dick would be better if you put whale sounds in it.”
