Attendees of the Online Publishers Association "Forum for the Future" discuss how to adapt to the upcoming needs of the online consumer.
Publishers are thinking open source and aligning themselves with how, where and when people consume content. Marketers, are you listening?
"Today everyone is a syndicator, aggregator and publisher," Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters Media, told the Online Publishers Association "Forum for the Future."
But everyone is also -- or should be -- platform-agnostic, according to Jeffrey Rayport of Marketspace, who opened two days of candid discussions with the admonition that "multi-platform is the new basis of online publishing."
More than 200 media executives from the U.S., Europe and Asia gathered March 7-9 in London to envision their collective future. Amid speculation over when video and mobile advertising dollars might become significant, attendees redefined the role of editors and reporters, learned what a home run startup now looks like to VCs and came up with many more questions than answers.
A few points of agreement emerged: Media brands matter less than they used to; tools and applications are the new editorial bundles; and agencies must also lead with technology, or die.
Mainstream media's new reality
Media content has been severed from the platform on which it is consumed. Online publishers must make content available when and where consumers want it, regardless of format or technology platform. IAC Media & Advertising CEO Peter Horan put it this way: "In a world of search, media brand helps but does not drive the process."
Forbes.com has already moved to what CEO Jim Spanfeller calls "entwined media." Forbes delivers content in text, data, video and audio formats, via the web and handheld devices. With 50-60 original video programs per week, mobile editions, local language sites with content specific to that region, and vertical industry coverage, Forbes aims to give consumers what they want and where and how they want it, according to Spanfeller.
At England's Guardian sites, which boast 15.7 million unique visitors, Editor Alan Rusbridge said that reporters are beginning to think of themselves as members of a digital enterprise. They're learning to shoot and narrate videos, take their own photos and generally make the difficult transition to "one paper, ten platforms."
Tools and technology, plus content
In an open source world, said Marketspace's Rayport, online publishers need to "let the outside in and the inside out." Citing YouTube's success in having 60 percent of its streams viewed on third-party sites, he advised publishers to provide open access to content so that consumers can help propagate it across the web.
Publishers disregard tools and technology at their own peril. According to IAC's Horan, "I thought I was running a media company, but I found it was really a software development company."
When looking at new opportunities, a panel of VCs identified tech-enabled companies as the ones that get a five- to seven-year investment time horizon. It's inexpensive to start a site, but very expensive to build it up to tens of millions of unique visitors, which is what you need to be successful, according to Allen Morgan of Mayfield Fund. The surest way to succeed, he suggested, is to offer an application that enables consumers to do your marketing for you.
Show us the money
What is the role of advertisers and agencies in the future of online publishing? Once upon a time the ad business could depend on a predictable chain of influence, said Bob Greenberg, CEO of R/GA Advertising. It looked like this: Advertiser > Agency > Content > Technology > Consumer.
But agencies and publishers that continue to act as if this is true today will not survive tomorrow, he warned. Acknowledging the difficulty publishers have in meeting the consumer's need for technology that finds, organizes and delivers content to fit their busy lives, he put the burden equally on agencies to do this with marketing content.
Greenberg challenged agencies to change immediately to accommodate a new chain of influence that starts with technology and ends with content that has been crafted and delivered to the consumer's specifications: Technology > Consumer > Advertiser > Agency > Content.
This is more true now that there's an entire generation for whom creating content has always been as easy as reading the content of others. But are user videos and blogs endangering the principles and practices of professional journalism?
New York Times Senior VP of Digital Operations Martin Nisenholtz cautioned publishers, "We need to recognize that blogs represent opinion, not objective facts," and that people want to associate their opinions with trusted brands, which also serve as a check on unbridled subjectivity.
With consumers creating content and journalists acting like guides, the future of major online media is uncertain but filled with promise for the bold. Publishers are transforming themselves to lead the way, but they depend on support from marketers, which is sometimes slow to materialize.
For all their investment to date in video and mobile platforms, for example, publishers say that ad dollars are not yet there. A panel of broadcast executives called for getting past the 30-second spot.
"It takes time working with advertisers to figure out what's best," said Betsy Morgan, SVP and GM of CBSNews.com.
Albert Cheng, EVP, Digital Media, Disney ABC Television Group, added that the rich media ad spend is small. "We need to tap other budgets," he said.
Fittingly, the OPA "Forum on the Future" closed with futurist Wolfgang Grulke's advice to publishers to create their own tomorrows. His grim reminder: "At the end of the life cycle, there is no life," was coupled with his advice to choose your future and plan for how you will get there.
In a world where products, services and infrastructure are all becoming increasingly commoditized because of technology, the new leaders will be those who can thrive with falling prices.
Bennett Zucker is vice president of the Publisher Media Exchange (PMX) for Right Media, Inc. Read full bio.