2010: The Year Of The Tablet

What do you want for Christmas? Well apparently thousands of us will be hoping Santa brings us a tablet computer. Last year that wasn't really an option (btw how much am I bid for a 2009 netbook?). On January 27th 2010, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed "Netbooks aren't better at anything!" (although to be fair, Steve, most are at least pretty good at multitasking and many even support Flash). He went on, as had been widely predicted, to introduce a 'magical and revolutionary product': the iPad (not iSlate, iTab or Maclet - OK I made that one up). And the rest already looks like history. What a difference a year makes. 

Other tablets are already here and more are in the pipeline: e.g. Samsung Galaxy Tab, Archos 101, Blackberry PlayBook, plus offerings from Dell and HP, among others.

Apple has shipped 10 million iPads since April. Apps are selling well at around $5 each. According to a survey of 5,000 tablet users by Nielsen, 91 percent of iPad owners have downloaded an app and over half have paid for content. Early days, but looking like a success by any measure.

The rise of tablets has even offered the prospect of a new lease of life for the beleaguered Newspaper and Magazine industry, whose tough times have continued during 2010. We recently got the first results for the traffic on The Times and Sunday Times new websites with their new paywall (for a great analysis read this by Ashley Friedlein of Econsultancy). If Mr Murdoch can persuade large numbers of us to pay for the news, whether on iPads, Macs or PCs, the entire newspaper industry, and many outside it, will breathe a sigh of relief. And I, for one, will be surprised.

New iPad apps are currently being announced every day from a range of content owners including Wired, Sports Illustrated and The Washington Post. News Corp and Apple have said they will launch an iPad-only publication entitled ‘The Daily’, while Richard Branson’s new ‘Project’ will also be launched for the iPad only. Meanwhile, The Independent’s new newspaper ‘i’ will not be published on the web at all, rather it will be launched as a paid-for iPad app. The new Guardian iPad app is expected shortly.

Crucially, we should remember tablets are mobile devices and we are prepared to pay for mobile apps whereas we seem to expect everything we access on the web via our PC/ laptop to be free (eg. telegraph.co.uk and guardian.co.uk). Don't ask me why this is; I blame the BBC and The Pirate Bay (unlikely bedfellows, admittedly). Interestingly, the new BBC iPlayer international service is launching exclusively as an iPad app...For what it's worth, my prediction is that tablets and laptops will in time merge to form one class of machines with a wide range of specs and form factors. Until then, I'm sure Apple is happy to sell both iPads and MacBook Airs (often 1 of each to the same person!).

So much for the shiny new boxes and their glossy new content. But what about 'ads on the pads'? Check out Apple's iAd mobile advertising platform, launching in Europe this month and offering ads within mobile apps on iPad,  iPhone and iPod touch; brands including Renault, L'Oreal and Unilever are among the first to book campaigns through the network. Allegedly and in typically bullish fashion, Apple won't talk to UK agencies about advertising via iAd, its first ad network, unless they're spending £600k+. Possibly too expensive for a new initiative of this kind in this market. But if consumers continue to consume increasing amounts of content on tablets, make no mistake, we WILL find ways to drive brand engagement on these nice new screens; especially the full 9.7 inchers (and even on Samsung's and BlackBerry's smaller 7-inch models of which Steve Jobs has been so publicly contemptuous).

So, yet again, Apple has invented a new category of device. Tablets have changed the game: things will never be the same. Cue gratuitous link to my favourite TV ad of 2010, for Yeo Valley... over 1,267,000 YouTube hits and rising; 3,348 Facebook 'likers' (remember this is for YOGHURT!!!), narrowly beating (in my book at least) P&G's Old Spice Guy who started out on good old TV and then 'went social' (and indeed viral) at a much lower cost/000 (24,120,000+ YouTube hits, 1,166,000+ Facebook 'likers' and 120,000+ Twitter followers).

OK so maybe 2010 was the Year of iPad. And as for next year? Take your pick. Social Media. Location. HTML5. Mobile internet. Even faster Search. Windows Phone 7 (yes really). Android. Chrome OS. Facebook Places and Deals. Oh...and iPad 2 (new shell, camera, USB port but definitely no Flash).

Happy Holidays!

Happy Old Year

So that was the Northern Hemisphere Summer, huh? September already. Back to school. Brrr. A chill in the air. Colder misty mornings. Leaves turning brown. The year’s rushing by. Soon be time to start planning Christmas. OK: exaggeration. (?)

I sometimes wish I were a futurist; it sounds like fun to be able to make some predictions about the future and then run away (on to the next conference in a different continent) before anyone can hold me accountable. But let’s be fair. Just for a moment let’s pause and look back to January. What did we predict was going to happen in digital marketing this year? And has it?

I was recently re-reading my Blog post dated Jan 10 2010. Predictions for 2010 included:

The Androids are coming

Google's mobile platform is gaining ground fast. The first Android phones have sold well and more are on their way. HTC, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and yes, even good old Motorola (who invented the category so long ago) are all getting in on the act. Meanwhile iPhone 4, after a few embarrassing birth pains, is selling well and it currently looks like RIM/Blackberry which is in danger of getting left behind in the smartphone race. The Android invasion is gathering momentum.

Location-based services/ augmented reality
Well this one was a no-brainer. Check out (or check-in?) Foursquare, Gowalla and yes, the new Facebook Places (damn - missed that one). Watch out for privacy issues though.

Rupert Murdoch to pull all his content off Google.
Well the Paywall is up for the Times/ Sunday Times and the UK ‘red-top’ The News Of The World is next. As to how many online readers have been lost, estimates average at about 50% but some suggest many more.  Are these few paying online readers a sufficiently engaged, high-quality audience for which advertisers will willingly pay a premium?  The Jury’s still out.

HTML5
If anything, Steve Jobs of Apple appears to hate Adobe’s Flash even more than at the start of the year. The iPad and iPhone don't support Flash. No apologies for this from Apple. All the Flash designers I know are learning HTML5 and quickly...

...and the Apple tablet
OK so we didn’t get the name quite right (iSlate? iTab? Could easily have been.).

But Apple certainly launched the iPad on January 26th and at a stroke defined the new tablet category, selling 3 million units in the first 80 days. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has just been announced and we await tablet offerings from HP, RIM (the "BlackPad") and even Toshiba. Game on.

Meanwhile downloads from the Apple App Store hit 6.5 billion. Apple also announced the iBooks app (for the iPad naturally) while iAds promises to disrupt (or should that be kick-start?) mobile advertising in a big way. In May Apple overtook Microsoft to become the world's biggest technology company. No wonder Steve Jobs seems to be enjoying every new announcement even more than the last these days, despite the odd glitch along the way.

Admittedly we also predicted a Facebook IPO (2012 apparently), that Twitter’s growth would stall and that Steve Ballmer would step down at Microsoft. But some of these weren’t really serious. And could still come true anyway. It certainly seems that Windows 7 is a better product than the bizarre launch promotional activity had led us to expect. Oh and News International has not YET done a content deal with Bing (but watch this space). At least we didn't predict 2010 would be 'The Year Of Mobile’ (as everyone knows, that will be 2011)...

Overall, then, not too shabby. We’ll try to do better for next year. With apologies to our Southern Hemisphere readers, (btw, anyone need a speaker in Cape Town?) let’s enjoy our digital Autumn...

Changing Times. But will we pay?

© 1979 Pink Floyd Music Ltd

Today, we find a place to rent or a house to buy, we book a holiday and stay in touch with our friends using different technologies from those our parents relied on 25 years ago. We all know the internet has changed the world, both economically and sociologically. We call it 'The Internet Revolution', but this wasn't just an event which occurred in 1998 (say) and then stopped. It's an ongoing process. This is the Revolution. We're in it. And big changes will keep on happening.

In the near future, two websites will no longer be free to access. You'll need to pay £1 for a day, or £2 for a week's complete access. The two sites are thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk. (quick: have a look for free now, before the 'paywall' goes up!) It's not much money really. So what's all the fuss about?

The significance of this move is that these are big serious 'newspaper websites' and that this 'experiment' could go either way. We are used to getting our online news for free. But soon the c.21 million (unique users per month) readers of www.timesonline.co.uk are going to be told: "We have 2 great new sites now, but you must pay or we won't let you see them." (No fee, no view). How will readers react?

The world is watching. This is being seen as a test case. If anyone has the 'cojones' to try this move, it is Rupert Murdoch, Proprietor of the (London) Times and the Sunday Times. Indeed it could be argued that he has little choice. The Times and The Sunday Times lost £87million in 2009. But was this due to: i) not charging enough for its content or ii) paying too much to too many journalists or iii) not attracting enough advertising revenue? (or indeed all of the above?)

We are talking about the most extreme form of 'paywall'. Google and Bing won't be able to 'crawl' the content or show it to us. Searches will no longer turn up stories from either website.  If I subscribe and you don't, when I send you a link you'll have to stop at the entry barrier until you lay down your dollar (must remember that for future posts...) This is certainly a bold initiative, and the advertising and media world is divided as to whether a) it's a good thing and b) it will work.

The Times and The Sunday Times are part of Times Newspapers Ltd which is part of News International Ltd which is itself part of News Corporation (still with me?) which also owns 38% of Sky TV and of which the founder, chairman and chief executive officer is Rupert Murdoch. The CEO Europe and Asia and heir-apparent is his son, James Murdoch. The Times itself is one of the oldest newspapers in the world. Founded in 1785, the newspaper (nicknamed The Thunderer) invented the Times New Roman typeface (=font)  in 1932. It was bought by Murdoch in 1981, and in the late 1980s, after a fierce struggle against the trade unions, based its operations at 'Fortress Wapping' in East London. Murdoch himself is not a Luddite; far from it; News Corp. owns MySpace (another brand currently engaged in a bitter fight). He has introduced much new technology into newspaper creation and production. This could, however, be his biggest battle of all; persuading us to pay for our news (+ comment + opinion); in other words, proving that people will pay for quality news journalism even when it's accessed online.

The new sites are currently available on a free trial. No expense appears to have been spared in their content, design and build. There are cool features like a culture planner (from which you can plan your week's entertainment and even set your Sky+ TV recorder) and loads of embedded video and audio. They look great (especially on an iPad). Suddenly Harry Potter's The Daily Prophet doesn't seem like Science Fantasy. Perhaps this is what James Murdoch meant when he recently predicted "a revolution in reading". Maybe, just maybe, this is what the next generation of newspapers (and magazines) looks like. And we will have to pay.

If the model works, it offers the prospect of a viable future for news journalism. (Success would also raise questions about the validity of a Google search for news in a situation where the' best' analysis and comment is hidden away behind the various paywalls). If this initiative fails, who will choose a career as a trained writer-journalist in the years to come? If the paid-for printed newspaper is becoming a 'status symbol' carried by the few as an accessory (à la FT), will the online news site subscription be its digital equivalent? (So we can send those links out to impress our friends/ Twitter followers who can click them but can't see the content? I think not.) Will sufficient advertisers enthusiastically welcome the thinned-out VIP group in the rarefied atmosphere behind the paywall, deeming this to be an attentive, engaged (paying) audience worth paying a big premium to reach? That's the gamble. We're at a crossroads.

Understandably the media (on- and offline) is buzzing right now. These are just some of the views currently being expressed:

"I want my employer to be paid for my intellectual property."
Danny Finkelstein, chief leader writer and political columnist, The Times

"They must understand the fundamental dynamics of online advertising. It is unlikely that advertisers will pay a premium for ads on The Times because the ad unit is bigger, looks nicer or indeed, is being shown to a paying subscriber.... The real opportunity is to monetise the comment, analysis, features and interactivity that are a key part of the Times offering."
Rob Horler, MD, Carat (via Campaign)

"We estimate that the (online) audience ...will drop by more than 80 per cent. They're not going to be able to charge 20 times what everyone else charges (for advertising space). But... I would never bet against News International...I think everyone should applaud what they're trying to do."
Claudine Collins, joint head of investment, MediaCom (via Campaign)

"We're going to stop people like Google, or Microsoft or whoever, from taking our stories for nothing."
Rupert Murdoch

Speaking personally, I buy the Sunday Times Newspaper every week as I have for years. It's an overwhelming tome in 9 sections and generally it's interesting, well-written and free of typos. One of the stresses in my life is how little of it I have time to read before it goes into the recycling bin. But I don't resent the cover price of £2. I believe it's more than worth it. However, online, I feel and act differently and I know I'm not alone in this. The BBC gives me almost as much news as I want - for free. When I feel I need more, there are other (free) sites which help me to keep up with the latest developments in digital marketing and, equally importantly, the various activities of Wayne Rooney, Cheryl Cole and Justin Bieber.

It isn't much money but neither is it free. Every consumer will make their own 'purchase' decision. Will enough people pay the subscription to the new Times sites and will enough advertisers be prepared to pay enough to target these few subscribers so that the whole business model works? That is what they used to call the $64,000 question.

No-one can accuse Rupert Murdoch of walking away from difficult battles. And with an estimated net worth of $6.3billion, he can afford to take some risks. But has he taken on too much this time? Writers, both professional and amateur, crave credibility, authority and INFLUENCE. That is helped (albeit not guaranteed) by building a big audience. Will The Times's world-class journalists, who have grown accustomed to building their personal brands by accumulating large (unmonetised) online audiences, find themselves ignored, lonely and irrelevant behind the paywall, like the late night DJ on local radio, talking to only a few people (which might also mean only a few advertisers)?

Will this move by The Times turn out to be the salvation of paid-for news journalism, or just another brick in the wall of its mausoleum? No-one knows for sure: not even Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG, himself. But it's going to be interesting to watch.