Land Rover Publish William Boyd Advert

Today we read that Land Rover has become a digital publisher and the obvious question is, why? The answer is that it can ensure that their product is in the reader’s eyes and is aligned with the work, or to put it another way it cheap advertising.

Laptop manufactures love to see the backs of their devices in a film or on TV with their logo sometimes glowing for all to see. Sometimes product placement can be more subtle and may just be a packet of a brand of Corn Fakes sitting perfectly positioned on a shelf and in shot. We wrote many years ago about 'Cathy’s Book' which was altered to remove a specific lipstick and colour and changed to promote Proctor and Gamble’s ‘Cover Girl’ range. Years earlier Fay Weldon was paid by Bulgari to write  Bulgari into ‘The Bulgari Collection.’ Product placement is a real way to get your product infront of an audience in a subliminal way.

So when is naming a specific product in a book now innocent and when does it involve money and is product placement?

Land Rover have taken it a stage further with William Boyd’s “The Vanishing Game,” with key words that can launch video of Land Rover vehicles in action. Having been in a Land Rover on a constructed track and being driven up and down 45% rises with horizontal as well as vertical slopes the cars are amazing. Now by clicking on words such as ‘river,’ or ‘mountain,’ the reader will see footage of the car crossing a rugged waterway or traversing a mountain slope. Readers’ comments on their driving experience are also embedded.

All Boyd had to do to get the money was to write one of their vehicles into the storyline. Land Rover believe that by respecting the artist’s freedom this is more of a commission, than product placement or sponsorship. Well forget the reader, who pays for it and their views, it’s all obviously alright then!

So as author advances continue to be under pressure and net receipts continue to bite, will authors and their agents start to redefine some rights and will we see advertising, product placement rights being withheld? Will publishers now be knocking on the doors of every FMCG company offering lucrative deals to get their products placed in bestsellers or even to get the marketing expense fully covered? Will other car manufactures follow and will Jeremy Clarkson’s next book be published by Porche, or Bill Bryson’s next journey be by Tripadvisor, or Bob the builder be by JCB, or the Good Cook Book be by MacDonalds?   

Related Articles:

Brave New World October 2008 ; Product Placement or Product Search?

Original article from Digiday : 

Land Rover commissions novelist William Boyd’s latest

eBooks Free With Ads

The Victorians gave us the Penny Press, Short form and episodic fiction, serialisation and book and pamphlet advertising. Some will suggest that today’s developing digital market can learn much from yesterday’s initial era of mass reading.

Today we read of another ‘new’ Victorian‘ idea – the ebook with adverts.

We see adverts on many digital services today. You have to suffer the pop-up 20 seconds, before they let you into where you want to go. Now www.eBookPlus.com , is introducing ebooks with adverts on a ‘with advertising it’s free’ model.  A service offer based on the premise that you will accept adverts at the front of the book and each chapter to get the content for free.

Adverts in ebooks is going to happen, it is now a question of how it will happen and the implications of the change. We believe that no single platform will prevail and it is somewhat hard to see how it is a sustainable unique selling point.

But what about the questions we need to ask ourselves?

Is advertising supplemental or replacement income?

As ebook price fall off the edge of the deep discount clif, is the total advert replacement the answer? If revenues flip from a purchase or subscription model to an advertising one, how will net receipts be audited? After all today we have an ‘honesty box’ approach to much of the ebook market and so will this become clearer with advertising model or even more ‘net receipts?’

When will the ad space be sold?

It is hard to see pre production advertising sales in all but the bestsellers, but do we like some other media segments, now get involved with increasing ad sponsorship and sales at the concept stage?

If we apply adverts to digital why not also apply them to print?

Who sells the slot?

Is it outsourced the ad agents, done in-house by the publisher, or left to the distributor and retailer? What happens in the case of the self publisher? Should the advert be tied into the individual title and its content, or as the Victorians did it, completely independent of the subject content? The tied-in advert may well work at the bestseller level, but can it work on the rest? Does advertising actually get sold on block at a genre level and in doing so have greater appeal to advertisers who will enjoy a wider audience? If we talk about genre wide adverts, then we must we also consider adverts across all publishers within that genre? Can we have sponsors of all a publisher’s works? Imagine Nike could be sponsoring all Random House works this year. We also could envisage sponsoring deals on fixed time slots where Cadburys become the proud sponsors of Penguin literature. Advertising can be envisaged at many levels but which will raise the revenue return and be acceptable to both authors and readers?

We could envisage some interesting and maybe lucrative adverting or sponsorship auctions which could bring in significant money but who are best positioned to manage, control and exploit these?

Will moral rights be applied or are surrendered?

Can an author say no to a Macdonald’s advert in their work? Can they insist on the type of advertising permitted? Can certain localised adverting standards be applied to what is a global work? Does the control sit with the publisher, the author or the distributor as we enter an era of moral rights which was never encompassed or envisaged in many rights contracts?  

What is the licence sold and duration of the rights?

Does an advert have a defined shelf life, after which it disappears, or is it a perpetual sale that may be out of date, incorrect or even selling obsolete product within a short period of time? If an advertised product breaks advertising code, or the product is withdrawn from market, do the ebooks get recalled too? Imagine some of the recent processed food UK products that were found to not contain what they said and contained horse meat instead now being advertised in an ebook. Do the ebooks get recalled too?

Can the adverts be refreshed, or are they embedded for life?

Can an advert dynamically change according to territory sold into to and therefore can multiple ad slots be sold against the same space on a time and geographical or even on a demographical basis? Are adverts sold to an individual demographic profile or to a mass market?

Auditing the revenues?

If we assume the right to advertise is not  exclusive we could have multiple channels each having their own slots and net revenues but will a standard model prevail or will it be many different net based models?

We are all in favour of creating supplemental income and increasing the earnings of the authors, but ask that we take a step back to consider some of the implications before we take a giant leap forward to buy into the ‘emperor’s new cloths.’

http://www.eBookPlus.com

French and German News Publishers Want More

Sometimes it’s as if someone has only seen one side of the argument and proceeds to go half cock into resolving only what they see withoutout stepping back and taking in the wider picture and implications. How many times have we witnessed knee jerk reactions and in-trenched positions that have unravelled once people have taken a more measured viewpoint?

The French publishers originally launched their hostility at Google claiming that they and other search engines were republishing headlines and the first paragraph of articles without compensating them - the provider of the content. It is easy to see the delima as one service wants to be seen as the source and to get the hits that they can potentially monetarise, whilst the other wishes to index a broad range on content in order to provide a single portal and get the hits, that they can monotorise.  

Then in steps a government, who probably has been heavily lobbied by one side and we start to slide into a 'hotch potch' of unworkable or counter productive legislation. Last week the German cabinet gave its support to a draft law aimed to extend copyright protection to snippets of news articles republished by search engines. It would allow publishers charge search engines such as Google for the republishing of headlines and first paragraphs of articles. In essence the French and German publishers want to share in the revenue that Google earns from advertising displayed alongside their news snippets. They also believe that a headline and summary of an article that is published on Google News is often sufficient to satisfy the reader. The result they claim, is that the reader then doesn't click through to the publishers website, who then loses potential advertising revenue.

So one could first question why the publishers haven’t created their own collective news service? Is the Google service sufficient, or do people actually click through? What would be the equitable revenue share the publishers seek? Do the publishers want the share revenue or be paid per article hit? The questions go on and soon become as irrelevant as asking any TV news or radio channel for a share of news related revenues that they earn alongside the news. Google aren’t pretending the news is theirs, nor are they divulging the whole story. They are merely serving up a snippet. If that snippet didn’t exist how much traffic would even find its way to half the publishers who are demanding payment for being 'ignored' and bypassed today?

What would be the implications of extending this Franco German logic past news and magazines to other media such as books. If Amazon hadn’t pulled the industry through the metadata hedge, we still would have limited jackets on display and ‘search inside’ would be a bridge too far for many. Would book publishers now demand a fee from Amazon for creating a jacket, or search inside library that sells their content? The question of book reviews and fair use of what is basically marketing material by third parties is a very interesting point.

Sometimes we all have to recognise that the Internet is about connectivity and linking information to add value. It is about creating a ‘quid pro quo’ environment where different parties, that may have different business models and drivers, help each other for mutual benefit. Google makes money from advertising, publishers make money from publishing. Google merely uses snippets and gives full linkage and accreditation to them. They do not plagiarise the work, pass it off as theirs, or publish the full work, and they provide the publisher in effect with ' a free advert' and the more the publisher is indexed and seen, the more their brand and reputation is enhanced.

It would be perfectly responsible for publishers who don’t want to be indexed to opt out, but how many really would?  

Spiral Frog RIP

The world of music start ups is often fraught with litigation and shifting sands. Today Spotify continues to attract significant attention in the UK but even they have had their challenges.

Sadly one of the start-ups that offered so much, what seems so long ago when we were writing our Brave New World report appears to have died. Spiral Frog appeared to have lined up all the ducks; a heavyweight board, contracts with all the major labels, a compelling consumer model based on ad free music and the only negative was the time they took to get going. In August 2006 they had Universal Music, EMI and a launch but still took their time. However, although it continued and beat off many similar start-ups it wasn’t getting the consumer attention needed to satisfy and drive ads and fund their debt.

It appears that all the funding efforts to keep the company afloat have failed, causing another ad-supported free music download service to cease operations. If ad sponsored model fail to attract users and advertisers and music sales continue to slide it posses the interesting question of whether there is viable alternative to ‘free’.

Magazine Publishers Experiment with Ad Selling Strategies.

Digital magazine editions are set to be more commonplace with both direct to consumer as well as business to business offers. However what rate card will publishers charge? Will it be based on impressions or merely a flat rate, or remain tethered to the print copy?

A number of specialist niche magazines demonstrate that there is no current standard approach and that many models are being tried.

Item Publications produces digital editions of its Interface Technology magazine charging 12% of the equivalent ad in the print edition and has achieved a 66% penetration of print customers also buying into the digital edition. Hi-Torque Publications, who publish specialist bike magazines such as Road Bike Action, Mountain Bike Action and Dirt Wheels magazines just charge the print edition and today the advertises get the digital advert as a value added benefit. Sporting News Today, is a "digital only" daily publication using inserted adverts and adserver networks for revenue. eWeek who produce a different "digital version" to their print edition are audited by BPA Worldwide and charge each independently. Others have given the print edition away and charged just for the digital advertising based on known subscribers.

All that is known in the physical world is that an individual subscribed and received a copy. Reality is that no one knows if the physical magazine was even opened! Tracking the digital copy should be easier in that every digital page impression can be monitored and even tracked to the subscription. But if the page isn’t opened why would an advertiser pay? It raises the question of whether digital adverts should be charged retrospectively based on performance and not upfront based on subscribers.

Digital isn’t just about taking the physical copy and converting it to digital. The business models have to change to reflect usage and access and no one wants to pay when they aren’t being viewed.

Who Pays the NewsPiper?

We read today of the demise of the Nielson booktrade web site The Book Standard. There are certainly many wishing to compete within this crowded space and with limited financial reward many face uncertain futures.

The web is redefining journalism. It is changing the content, how it is delivered and the business model that has long underpinned it.

Newspapers now have to develop better ways to sell their ad space online and have to compete with new gorillas such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo has over 264 US newspapers distributing their content on their portal. Google's PrintAds program enables its customers place ads in 600 daily and weekly U.S. newspapers. These programmes are among others that are redefining the landscape.

Now four major U.S. newspaper groups have launched an online ad network that enables customers to book national campaigns to over 50 million readers a month in the US through a single point of contact. This group includes flagship newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times. This move is clearly aimed at protecting the business model and control over both web and print property.

This collaborative approach may negate the need for them to share revenue with the likes of Yahoo and Google. Both corporate and classified advertising is changing and being redefined online.

How Many Users Saw Your Ad?

If you were placing an advert you would want to monitor the number of people who saw it and if possible the resultant conversion rate and frequency of spend is achieved. In a direct marketing environment its about conversion and frequency rate and ensuring that the money is spent well, in the advertising mass market it is about ensuring the audience target has been reached and monitoring that the message has been received. So one would think that on the internet life becomes a whole lot easier and precise figures can be collated for each view and where appropriate each conversion.

Anyone who has placed adverts on the web will know that auditing ‘hits’, conversion, individuals and returns can often be as difficult as herding cats. We often find two camps page views versus pay-per-click. The later is basically payment based not on merely viewing the page but on clicking on the ad. This still doesn’t mean the user actually converted just that he clicked through. However, in the advertising world which is expected to more than double the $9.6 billion it represented as recently as 2004 and generate some $20 billion in revenue this year, its more about views than action.

So how many visitors did you receive today? Your web analyst will say one figure but the advertising measurement services such as ComScore and Nielson/Net Ratings a much lower one. Who is right and who is wrong? In the world of advertising the figures mean money! There are a myriad of reasons for the differences. Then there are issues regarding the number of times that advertisements appear on the web site and we have seen the recent purchase by Microsoft and Google of companies such as Atlas and DoubleClick who specialise in tracking this. There are also issues about tracking individuals who may masked behind a corporate or institutional gateway.

The wider adoption of Web analytics, as a discipline, may hold the answers in the web 2.0 world. This technology has evolved and the latest ‘page tagging’, is aimed at capturing business metrics such as the unique user, the visit, and the page view. However, until everyone counts the same way the true potential of Internet advertising may not be fully realised.

Health Warning as Internet Advertising is Bought-up

In the struggle for advantage in the digital advertising boom the search engines are buying up online advertising companies, sometimes for eye-popping prices. This week Microsoft agreed to buy the online advertising company Aqauantive for $6 billion, which is Microsoft’s largest acquisition ever. This month Google bought DoubleClick, a competitor of Aquantive, for $3.1 billion. , outbidding Microsoft.
Yahoo recently bought the 80 percent of Right Media that it did not already own for $680 million. The company operates an auction marketplace in which advertisers and publishers buy and sell online advertising space in real time. Also this week, AOL bought Third Screen Media, which operates an ad network for mobile phones, and Adtech, an online advertising firm in Germany. AOL was the first Internet portal to buy a major advertising network, Advertising.com, in 2004.

According to eMarketer, online adverts accounted for 5.8 percent of the $285 billion spent on advertising in the United States in 2006 and it estimates that the online share will rise to 10.2 percent by 2010. As dollars move online, the big Internet companies see a chance to capture an ever-larger portion of the advertising dollar.

Google, which leads the online advertising world, is among those trying to make inroads into Microsoft’s traditional software business by offering word processing, spreadsheets and other software free. Quantive, which is based in Seattle, will bring many advertisers to Microsoft.
The technology helps Web publishers earn the most for the ad space available on their sites.

The recent deals are also blurring the lines between the big Internet companies and traditional advertising companies and last week the WPP Group bought 24/7 Real Media, another DoubleClick competitor, for $649 million, to compete better with Internet companies.

As we see business models shifting to advertising based free content these shifts become even more alarming. Imagine if music, videos and even books where available free to download as long as you accepted the advertising feeds. Just like ITV and the other broadcasters it have done for years. What will that do to people who are still trying to sell in the traditional model and what will be the impact on price?