A revolution is on it’s way! January 26, 2010

Shall the media industry prepare for a post-print era? (Part II)

As reviewed in part I , the traditional printed media circulation and advertising revenues within this category were in steady decline since the beginning of the millennium in favor of online and other alternatives, the fact is web has a privilege over magazines and newspapers by being interactive plus the real time update-ability.

While the internet was never able to completely replace printed material, as using a computer screen for reading is still not a very pleasant experience for many.

e-Paper could hold the answer

There has been a lot of speculation about how serious the possibilities are for e-Paper to be replacing traditional paper, and for those who don’t know the difference between e-Paper and LCD or LED screens, e-Paper may simply be considered a combination of both minus the disadvantages, i.e. e-Paper is just almost like normal paper but capable of changing it’s content like a computer screen and can be read in bright sunlight or under a spot light like any book.

e-Paper technology is not so recent, major tech firms like Fujitsu, Sony, Philips, LG, Amazon, have been working on development and improvement of the technology for years. But what has been happening in the past few months is really impressive and suggests the change may come much earlier than expected.

LG recently unveiled a new flexible tabloid-sized reader, a more convenient alternative than it’s box shaped rival readers one step closer towards the introduction of the premium e-Reader.

Image: Korea Times

Image: hightechideas.com

Earlier this month at CES conference in Las Vegas, prototypes of the third generation e-Readers were demonstrated to the public,  according to CNN these new prototypes were promising much more than just black and white text: “Glimpses of the third generation are on display this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show, where manufacturers are previewing e-readers with color screens, interactive graphics and magazine-style layouts.“

Source : CNN

Is it going to happen anytime soon?
This radical transformation of printed media to e-Paper could in fact be CLOSER than expected, given the woes of the declining news and media industry, it could become a motive to push for such an alternative sooner than it normally takes for new developments and trends to spread. As early as 8 years from now the sales of e-Paper readers are expected to rise to $9.6 Billion, with 1.8 Billion units sold, If we compare this projected number to the total number of iPods sold so far which remains 8 times less with only 220 million units, we can imagine the impact this can leave on news and media industry as a whole and on advertising as well.

Chart :cnet.com

e-Paper advancements could be a last chance to revive the print and news media industry, as it combines the advantages of web interactivity while being user-friendly at the same time, but when this happens it could also mean that print and online advertising methods as we know it could fundamentally change to adapt to the new developments.

(Update: this technique could be also applicable for outdoor advertising in the mean time it appears that it’s still experimental)

Shall the media industry prepare for a post-print era? January 11, 2010

Jo Ads  Jan 11, 2010

In the past few years there has been a steady but sharp decline in the print media business, with newspapers and magazines losing both readers and advertising pages, many were forced to downsize or even close, in the USA media giants were not doing very well, New York Times is facing debts over $400 million, Washington Post and other dailies lost advertising pages in 2009, Newsweek magazine also suffered 33% decline in revenues.

In fact this has been going on for a while but the financial crisis only uncovered more than the tip of the iceberg, as number of pages and ad pages has been dropping sharply and steadily since the beginning of the millennium for traditional publications.

On the other hand advertising spend increased for online media channels, And while at the climax of the financial crisis when most publications were suffering heavy losses, google’s revenues for example -which are mainly generated by online advertising engines adwords and adsense- soared in 2008.

So now newspapers and magazines are fighting on two fronts: Declining circulation in favor of rising online alternatives, and advertising revenues leaking towards online channels. This trend called major publishers to act towards considering subscriptions and charging readers to view the content.

In Jordan though it is hard to find publicly available data on circulation trends, it is noted though that daily newspapers are facing new challenges with the rise of independent online news websites in the past two years, more and more readers are getting their news through these sites because of their convenience, and interactivity compared to traditional media. Magazine publications also follow the trend and obviously are not expected to be doing any better.

The question is what’s going to happen next?

Online advertising can take a major share out of traditional print, there has been an increasing use of social network sites as well such as facebook recently, but again these could serve as extra supporting channels to reach specific niches, and normally you cannot reach the mainstream and build a consumer brand by relying solely on facebook or web banners for example (Apart from outdoor or direct marketing).

The rescue as experts hope, could be an integration of both web and print, (which will be hopefully continued in part II)