AOP: The evolving content model

Posted by Martin Stabe on 4 October 2006 at 10:26
Tags: Bebo, Channel 4, Incisive Media, Journalism, Sunday Times, Times, Times Media, UK AOP

The first panel of the day features Ron Henwood, new business director of Channel 4, Times Media digital publisher Zach Leonard, Incisive media chairman Tim Weller and Jim Scheinman of Bebo.

The famously “platform agnostic” Weller praises Incisive Media’s “fantastic” B2B journalists, but says that one challenge is been to wean them off the habit of clinging onto their stories until they appear under a byline in a printed magazine.

Having established printing as quickly as possible in online publications as the norm at Incisive, however, leadto new challenges for reinventing the established print products.

“Print products need to be more discoursive, forward-thinking, and analystical” rather than just printing news, Weller says.

In the Q&A, the the panel is asked several questions touching on the competition between businesses focusing on horizontal content and those concentrating on narrow vertical niches. One question touches on whether the growth of vertical search engines is a threat to B2B publishers like Weller.

He rejects this, saying that vertical search is an opportunity for Incisive, and one which the company is already exploring in the insurance industry.

But Weller says narrower is generally better, and that his company always hopes to create products that appeal to the most specific community of buyers as possible.

Times Media’s Zach Leonard, however, says that for “horizontal” general interest publications like the Times titles, the correct response it to create many specific vertical channels that allow advertisers to target readers more precisely.

Leonard is also asked whether the Times has any plans for paid content products. He alludes to the Times newspapers’ vast archive, stretching back into the 18th century, which it is looking to use better online.

Basic archives can be used to simply increase traffic, but specific packages of that content could become paid-for content. He mentions that Virginia Woolfe once wrote film reviews for the Times and that this might be something that could be a product to monetize through reader payment.