Thursday, December 31, 2009

Print faces Google



Hilarious, loved the interactive game part.

As an engineer for a newspaper, I get to read plenty of technical stuff.

Yesterday, while visiting Google's AdManager it hit me: I recalled my disappointment when Google abandoned AdPrint, a system that would facilitate the process of taking ads in our print publications. I'm sure this was a tough decision for Google, they left on the table gazillions of dollars, considering that 90% of the ad revenue still originates in printed magazines and newspapers.

So, why did they do it?

Well, it's called "cutting the supply lines to the enemy". I still have a vivid recollection of how a small newspaper in Latin America climbed to a national circulation in the coattails of an overconfident leading daily. The renowned "diario A" agreed to haul "diario B's" newspaper bundles to subsidize their trucks' circulation costs —an unforgivable mistake, that "diario A" would soon sorely regret for years to come.

So, Google devilishly cut any aid to the frail print ad revenue lifeline —to assure its complete dominance of the advertising market.



AdManager is a wickedly brilliant piece of software, which basically acts as a traffic cop for the ad traffic into a publication, yielding at any moment, those ads that maximize the periodical's ad revenue.

The importance of technology (in wars) is well recognized since the time of the machines created by Alexander's engineers, which were the key to the submission of their besieged cities. Or, the more recent Brit engineering feat, the ingeniously gargantuan cement barges devised to navigate the British Channel and maroon in the less defended beaches of Normandy, meant to surprise as unloading docks for the hundreds of thousands of tons of equipment required for the invasion of Europe during World War II —the Nazis fortified the French ports, never imagining this flash of genius to the Allied disembarkment problem.

After foolishly bungling for years the reaction to the threat posed by the Internet's rising stars, printed periodicals face foes with magnificent internal technology developments. In our print world, technology is mostly outsourced, and what little is done internally does not suffice, —if the New York Times doesn't hold the flood waters, none of us will.

In other words, none of the old and established news organizations has developed systems as good as Google's, period. For an explanation, you might want to take a look at the hippo concept (from Avinash Kaushik's presentation) outlined in this previous post.

We also know that search engine technology has changed forever the advertising landscape, including that of radio and TV. In essence, search engines have solved the fundamental problem: the buyer's need to find a product; and in a very efficient and inexpensive way.

Adding insult to injury, the Internet allows news organizations universal and instantaneous reach, making wire news a repeat for the reader, and allowing local organizations to be cannibalized by their strongest peers. Further, Google facilitates millions of bloggers to have a free ride at publishing, with some very worthy and attractive commentators. As a consequence, content value has also diminished enormously.

I know these are all depressing negatives for anybody in the print business. So the real question is: how do we get out of this mess?

This problem is very similar to the one we face with China's manufacturing prices. There is no way of escaping the facts: labor prices in the rest of the world must come down to meet the lower price of labor in China. As well, print advertising prices must come down too.

So, the print industry must dramatically change to accommodate these lower prices.

Fortunately for news organizations, we (and our readers) are not machines, and probably computers will never get to be like us —according to the very convincing arguments of professor Bert Dreyfus.

In this respect, readers prefer to visit a select few places to shop for their news, —we seem to simply jump to the appropriate response, without considering any alternatives—, which is quite a positive for any small news outlet with good brand recognition in its local area, established over a long life of serving its readers.

Current technology offers the tools that allow us to further understand our readers like never before. It's a two way street, journalists need to commit themselves to this dialogue, or constantly adapt and align themselves to their readers' topics of interest —which by the way does not change the objective, it's always been this way, it argues for using these new tools to better serve our readers.

To sum it all up, with a current recession not helping, there's still a lot of restructuring to do to get to that advertisement equilibrium price in the print-digital news organization combo —although, breaking apart the news organization to allow for their individual optimization is a fundamental tenet to the overall solution.

But most of all, we all have to look at these very confusing times as opportunities, the dust will eventually settle, and the few that have learned to adapt will reap the rewards.



I leave you with this inspiring "Virgin" video from Richard Branson, who has repeatedly bought his way into companies against all odds and recommendations, if he believes there is a way out —which, I definitely do.

Monday, December 28, 2009

La venta de libros virtuales supera los tradicionales en Amazon

No me sorprende. Es evidente que Amazon busca promocionar su Kindle, regando la llamativa noticia de que en esta Navidad vendió más libros digitales que de los otros.

Sin lugar a dudas, el día 25 es una fecha excepcional para Amazon. Por un lado, es cuando vende más libros virtuales en el año, —para satisfacer a todos los afortunados que recibieron un Kindle de regalo la nochebuena. En cambio, por otro, es uno de los días de menor volumen de ventas de libros físicos del año —quienes compraron un libro para estas fiestas, querían ponerlo debajo del arbolito la noche del 24.

En realidad, me sorprende que no hayan difundido esta noticia las Navidades del año anterior.

Sí, encontré raro, que Amazon esté dispuesta a sacrificar $1 por libro digital para promocionar su venta; en cambio, aparentemente los autores no estarían dispuestos a reducir sus derechos de autor —lo que creo es un error muy costoso para éstos últimos.

Hace un par de días ya comenté donde Gabriel, que la economía nos enseña que el modelo de ventas de un producto digital debe ser uno muy distinto al de un producto físico.

Me explico.

Entendiendo que cualquiera puede publicar al mundo sus ideas en un website (blog, u otro) de manera casi gratuita, instantánea e universal, hay adicionalmente otros factores que hacen del libro digital uno muy especial:
  • sus costos de almacenamiento y distribución son prácticamente nulos,
  • y el de venta debería también reducirse considerablemente, porque los buscadores (como Google) hacen cada vez menos importantes a los intermediarios, —el lector puede buscar (o Googlear) cualquier tema (libro, noticia, canción...) que le interese, y tratar directamente con el autor.

El concepto de costo marginal, afirma que los productores (o autores, en este caso) producirán más, mientras el costo de producir una unidad adicional sea menor al precio de venderla.

Pero, en el caso de los productos digitales (libros, noticias, música y otros) ya hemos visto que los costos marginales tienden a cero.

Entonces, un autor sensato, debería cobrar mucho menos que antes, —permitiendo que los consumidores hagan micropagos—, porque universaliza la demanda, evita los costos de difusión, elimina la piratería, y finalmente... maximiza su ganancia.



Patente iSlate de Apple? por Gizmodo


Me acabo de enterar a través de esta noticia que es muy posible que Apple anuncie el lanzamiento de su iSlate para fines de enero del 2010 —a todo color, y si es tan exitoso como el iPhone...

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Cinco caminos para ser más felices

Espero que este regalo de Navidad les guste.

Se trata de una serie de lecciones de qué hacer para ser más felices por Tal Ben-Shahar.




Felicidades!

Friday, December 18, 2009

Los hipopotamos en la web



In this amazing (hour long) video Avinash Kaushik explains web analytics, and more. I warn you, it's not a recent video, circa 2007, but, it's still the best explanation I've seen of the basic tools to improve a website.

He poses that the vast majority of websites are based on the... hippo factor, or on the highest paid person opinion in the room at the time a website design decision is made; which I'm sure sounds familiar to many. But, there's definitely a better way: to test the ideas through our visitors opinions, with the optimizer tool, for instance.

In essence, he is telling us that we must better understand our visitors: who they are, why they're there, or what do they want; and that this is possible —the tools are out there.

When thinking about content, he mentions a great tip from Guy Kawasaki: visitors must have learned something useful when leaving your site —which doesn't necessarily include what a good time you had last Saturday night.




Site Improvement Subjects with Priorities
by Avinash Kaushik
(explanation at 40:12 mins into the video)

He is saying that it's possible to dig deeper into the numbers, —visits and averages, tell a very poor story; whilst Google and others provide us with wonderful (and free) tools to do so: Google analytics, keyword, sktool and optimizer, as well as compete, are just a few of them.

But, Voice of Customer is the first in his list of priorities, which is asking the visitor directly: why is he at your site, is he leaving satisfied, and if not, why. I've found LimeSurvey pollDaddy and survs to be a couple of nice little (free) survey application, which I suggest adding at the end of every post.

Then, he suggests we dig deeper into the so called Multiple Outcome Analysis, or what is (are) the objective (s) of the website, and how to measure it (them). Or, what is it that we want to achieve with our website. For example, if self-promoting, measure book sales, conference appointments... plus a second outcome could be to contribute your subject matter of expertise to fellow bloggers.

A Clickstream Analysis, or studying our website to determine what keywords are bringing our visitors into our website, and what other popular keywords might also bring them in; as well, as those less popular, in the long tail, that might also bring in a substantial amount of visitors to our site.

Again, Avinash's video is a must see for anyone trying to get a grasp on what is going on out there in cyberspace.