The Media Briefing
At the PPA’s Reinvented conference last week, The Drum reported DC Thomson CEO Ellis Watson saying that “publishers must remember to focus on their core offering and get back to basics” and the “obsession” with technology was “getting ridiculous.”
There’s no doubt that publishers need to get “the basics” right, but in the internet age both good content and good technology are necessary, if not sufficient, requirements for a media business that wants to still be here in 10 years time. If anything, publishers are nowhere near obsessed enough about getting the technology right, and here are six examples why:
1. Half your lunch has already been eaten by tech companies
Watson was also quoted as saying:
“Don’t believe what the voices of the technologists and futurologists that say that digital is the imminent future for our business. It’s a fantastic complement, but it’s not the replacement of it, nor the killer of it.”
Let’s set aside for the moment the debate about whether the future will be entirely digital (though it will be), and focus on digital’s impact so far. You don’t need to look far to see one area where better digital technology has already killed a big part of the media business – all you need to do is look at the impact Google has had on classifieds revenue.
While total print advertising is still falling, classifieds fell off a cliff long ago. That’s hit newspapers, specialist magazine titles and, of course, the company once known as Yellow Pages. The primary culprit is Google (as well as sites such as eBay and Craigslist), simply because it came up with a more efficient way to find the specific service or purchase you were looking for.
If a disruptive force can use digital to kill of one formerly huge chunk of your business, is it really wise to assume it won’t happen again? An ad-focused publisher may not be saved by better technology in areas such as programmatic trading or high-impact formats, but without it your chances of riding out another innovative disrupter are slim to none.
2. Consumers are already using the best tech, and they’re your competitors
Publishers are going to have a very very hard time competing with the likes of Facebook and Twitter when it comes to clever investment in and development of technology. But that’s fine because you can use their platforms to reach your audience, right?
Yes, except for one big caveat. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Medium all allow anyone to access that same audience, and they get to work with the same tools as everyone else. The more sophisticated these platforms get, the easier it is for the average joe in the street to create good content that can find an audience and compete for its time. And when that happens, the ad money is going to go to the platforms, not the publishers.
