We’ve had a couple of months now to use the tool and download loads of applications (or mini programs) whilst using it to surf the internet and access email.

So, how good is it? Will it make money – for anyone – and if so, who?

Let’s start with, is the iPad any good?

Well yes, I give it a B+. That is because it liberates digital books, movies and magazines from a desk and moves them onto a easy to watch portable screen where I can ‘enjoy’ reading / listening / watch digital media again.

But, I only give it a B+, and that it because if fails the beach and bath test and only just makes the bed test.

You see, the difference between a real (ie paper) book and a digital book (on a computer) is that the real book can be taken to the Bs – that is beach, bath, bed, bench, bus and, yes, the bog.

Now, the iPad is sufficiently portable to work on the bus – so great for commuters and travellers. The long battery life also supports this usage. I took mine on a 24 hour boat trip and we had fun with the games and luckily I remembered to download the latest editions of The Times and Financial Times to my iPad so I could read these on route.

The 10 hour battery life was more than enough.

The iPad also works well inside the house or office, so can be read on the sofa and, can just about be read in bed – but if you are likely to fall asleep with your nightly read you might prefer a softback book or newspaper to land on your nose.

The iPad can be used outside, especially if you can avoid very bright days, and I used it to navigate myself around Manchester, UK´s city centre using the excellent google maps (not too much risk of a bright day in Manchester).

However, where the iPad doesn’t work is on the beach. The sun is too bright, the sand too course, and whilst you worry about dropping or having it stolen the real risk is the humidity, or heaven forbid, a wave.

At the end of the day, the iPad is a beautifully designed but sensitive instrument. It is remarkably light, but still much heavier than a paperback and weighs more like a hard back.

So, it scores a B+. It is a remarkable leap forward for digital publishers and hence, it rightly creates lots of excitement.

Who will make the money?

However, the iPad is only as good as the software/ content / media / apps which you load onto it. So, the future of the iPad depends on what we fill our iPads with and whether the publishers can turn a profit.

A failure to turn a profit for publishers – or at least generate significant revenues – will turn the iPad into a desert. In otherwords, if publishers of games, books, movies, music, books or information or digital tools can’t make money, they won’t develop and so the things you can do with your beautiful iPad will be nothing.

Okay, so who will make the money? In the first instance Apple – but the success of this new medium and therefore Apple’s long term profitability will depend on users buying all the digital media they can.

Don’t forget, Apple also takes a huge 30% cut on anything sold through its istores. So, let’s take 3 major brands and see if they will make money with the iPad.

Financial Times

The FT has an excellent iPad application which is free until the end of July. When this becomes a paying product, I will subscribe. I love the ability to both see the latest data (ie like a website) but also download the current edition (to read off line, on  a plane, boat or train). The business news and need to know data of the FT makes this a ‘must have’ for business people like myself. Yes, I will pay for this.

The FT iPad edition currently has a single advertiser which it has inserted into each article – so the advertising doesn’t require me to use a horrid navigation style to reach the articles I want. However, how much can the FT sell this space for? Quite a lot – but to just one advertiser?

Well, the ability to sell space to more advertisers depends on page views – do I reach more on the FT iPad than I used to on the FT website? I can’t measure this for sure – but I think the answer is yes.

The Times

The Times also has a clear iPad strategy and they can also put their online content behind a paywall which means I have to pay to read The Times one way or another. I choose to pay the iPad subscription and I’m glad I did. It is much better than an online subscription.

Each day I download that day’s edition and having read /scrolled it, then I am satisfied that I know all the important stories (as well as being able to see that Arsenal still haven’t signed a new goal keeper).

The Times’ navigation works in  a different way, and it tries to force you to scroll through the pages – like flicking through the pages of a magazine – because this allows The Times to add adverts for IBM and Lloyds Bank in between the articles. I find these adverts annoying and I prefer the navigation structure of the FT – albeit that The Times will be able to measure a large increase in page views – because I am flicking through very quickly.

The other major development is that the opinion elements of The Times has taken a much higher profile place on the iPad edition. Some of these commentators are excellent, such as the ex-editor of The Economist, and these unique pieces of content plus the overall editorial selection of The Times will keep me as a subscriber.

I am, though, less confident about The Times’ advertising model.

Rough Guides

I also downloaded the Rough Guide to Spain through Apple’s iBookstore. My advice to you: don’t!

The Rough Guide to Spain is very disappointing. Instead of a 600 page print book, it turns into 1500 pages on the iPad. I am constantly scrolling to find what I want but it all seems to be about Madrid.

I also used the search facility – to find a small spanish pueblo called ‘Cati’ and I had a series of problems. Firstly, the village was not included (but it did feature in my 10 year old Lonely Planet Guide) and secondly, the search brought up every word that included the term ‘cati’ so any page which included the word ‘communication’ was included. I search through all the results and after 10 minutes found that the book didn’t have what I wanted.

Nor did the book contain a single entry on the region of the Maestrazgo region – where I wanted to visit. This region is akin to Northumberland in the England, so is a significant omission.

All the iPad book did in this instance is demonstrate the lack of content and editorial organisation and that my 10 year old Lonely Planet guide was better. If I’d picked it up in a bookshop I would never have bought it.

So, a refund would be in order, right? Oh no, that is against Apple’s policy. So I’m stuck with a useless book that cost 15 GBP and I can’t even give it to someone else or donate to a library. Useless!

Others

Of course, the iPad offers lots of other media activities, free YouTube videos, Doodle Jump games, Checkers/ Draughts etc… and especially useful are the google maps which are massively improved for the ability to zoom and slide in and out of the maps.

So, games will work well on the iPad, but the repeat revenues will belong to the media groups.

So, the iPad winners are

Okay, so who wins? Clearly Apple do. There are enough quality products and variety that every iPad owner will enjoy the machine and keep recommending friends and colleagues to get one too.

Apple also take 30% on sales – so they don’t care who wins – so long as some companies do.

Okay, now the losers. The book publishers. These businesses face a massive increase in costs to rebuild their content to deliver value on the iPad – this is not going to be economically viable for 99% of books. A few key reference books yes – but I don’t see the Rough Guide brand surviving unless it move very quickly.

Now the survivers. The newspapers. These media products have so much to offer, great stories, unique comment, top quality photography that adding video and live feeds is a natural next step. The FT have already done this and The Times is now including video feeds from Sky.

Also, News International (owners of The Times) are plugging the iPad edition massively in their print papers.

Yes, the traffic to The Times online website has dropped 70% since the paywall went up - but that is okay because it wasn’t generating profits anway. Better to have 30 committed readers that advertisers want to reach than 100 that don’t really know why they are on the website.

However, the FT will do better still. The iPad is a natural business information tool and information publishing companies will be looking to deliver their unique content into the iPad.

Of course, the newspapers which close down their free online content and drive the best of their traffic to iPad subscriptions will do well as they will make money whilst also getting rid of the cost burden of maintaining free services online. However, this route works better for larger media groups that also have the news and sports videos to integrate into their iPad editions.

The losers have to be the books. And magazines will fit somewhere in between. Specialist magazines should thrive whilst smaller national newspapers will be bought up and repurposed.

And local newspapers? It will be tough to take these loss making businesses into a successful digital format whilst beating off competitors for the jobs, cars and property advertisers that have already corrupted their business model.

So yes, the iPad does offer media a great opportunity, but it will also massively reform the media landscape.

Online Looks Like a Newspaper?

The great media experiment begins as London’s The Times and Sunday Times erects a paywall that requires online readers to subscribe.

So what are they selling? Simple really, either you buy today’s edition – or you buy a subscription to all the editions this month.

No atomic content sales here! No micro payments of 2p for 1 article – no! Just as we forecast, we have returned to selling newspapers!

Hurray!

The big question now is – can The Times make it work?

Well, time will tell – but let’s take a look at their offer. You have two choices

• £1 for a day pass (ie today’s edition) – sold rather like WiFi access is sold – on a time limited basis.

or

• £1 for 30 days (ie a subscription) – with repeat billing at £2 per week after the first month – or £8.66 per month.

So what does this tell us about strategy?

Clearly, everyone will choose the £1 for 30 days over the £1 for one day! So, the pricing is designed to turn us into subscribers.

And, what are we subscribing to? A £104 per year subscription. Is that a lot or a little? Well, my Economist subscription renewal has just arrived and I’m offered a 47% discount which means I pay £108 per year.

Practically the same then!

What is interesting is how this relates to buying copies at the newstand. Each copy would cost £1 during weekdays and £1.50 for the Saturday paper. The Sunday Times costs £2.

So, add it all up and you ‘could’ spend £442 per year on buying every copy of The Times and The Sunday Times. So, will the offer be shown as 77% off? Well, maybe, but who buys every copy every day? Perhaps a library – but no sane individual?

Hence, there would appear to be a growing practice of charging just over £100 for an annual subscription for a quality news feed.

And it fits well – because even if you took the view that you would only buy the paper 3 times per week plus the a Sunday paper – and not holidays – so 48 weeks of the year – your annual cost would still be £240.

And, of course, this subscription gives you access to the mobile (iphone) edition too – which, if bought through a different iPad subscription is a more expensive £9.99 per month. Now, the iPad edition is not great to navigate – the FT does a far better job – but that is another story.

The point is that the current pricing model adopted by The Times makes internet buying of newspapers a bargain!

Great – so the pricing strategy is clear – and is based on The Economist superbly successful subscription model. Now, will it work?

Want me to get off the fence and answer that? Well, of course, I have to say yes.

Why? Simply, the pricing is very attractive but also based on very sound principles – The Economist probably the best selling subscription product in the world and people are already paying for it – and The Times have taken a leaf out of their book (or newspaper).

You can register at http://www.timesplus.co.uk/welcome/index.htm to get a ‘preview’ of what is to come  – and yes, it is all about paying, but it is also about paying for the new generation of digital media.

The point here is that we are about to see a new generation of digital media – perhaps partly inspired by the new devices that can carry it – but far more interactive, graphical and video based, than before.

Interesting development.

So, what is significant about this?

… you are looking at an issue – a publication – no longer looking at atomised content – or a collective of individual pages.

What is clear is that this is a particular issue from a particular time covering all the issues, the scores, the stories and the trivia that were alive and interesting and relevant at that time.

It is an issue. It has a date. In time, it gives a glimpse of what was important back then, when it was published.

Media then, is attempting to return to its roots with its latest devises – that is publishing newspapers, magazines and books – only this time with multi-media content.

Perhaps we should have labled this post Back to the Future?

News Stand - Should Look Like This Online?

The FT is not going to ‘sell content’ online but they are going to start to sell daily newspapers online. Remember, the daily newspaper is the essence of any newspaper brand.

In an interesting report (also on the FT) the news was headlined as FT selling content for micropayments.

However, the really interesting news is that the FT is not going to sell individual articles (content) – but individual daily newspapers.

The mooted price is £2 – which is a similar price to what people pay at the newsagents.

It does rather seem that we have a hallelujah moment here. Suddenly, online media looks like offline media only distributed digitally as opposed to via newsagents.

Suddenly, you get the feeling here, what’s the big deal to buy a newspaper for £2? Do you have an issue with that? Of course not.

So, by dropping all this nonsense of online media is different, we can just see digital as a different distribution route for the same ideas.

Of course, there may be a few interesting developments here – such as the daily print newspaper containing a voucher which allows the reader to view it online… to deliver an enhanced brand experience  … an automatically download copy to your iPad …. or perhaps not?

It will be interesting to see what the FT does – and then even more interesting to see how the FT adapts its model to reflect consumer response.

But this is the first clear sign that media owners will return to selling packaged and branded goods (in this case a daily newspaper) and stop all the silly nonsense around selling single articles for pennies.

Print media owners figured out years ago that readers didn’t want to stand at the newstand shelling out 2p for each article they found interesting. No, they just wanted to hand over the money, get the package/ paper/ book/ magazine, and take it away.

Not so very different after all?

We Live in Interesting Times! (with apologies to the FT’s We Live in Financial Times strapline)

Can Publishing Brands Sell Online and Deliver Customer Loyalty?

The question occupying all media folk is ‘will content sell online?’ To which there is not yet a satisfactory answer.

Why?

I suggest that the question itself is nonesense and hence the argument for or against the sale of ‘content’ is fallacious.

Okay, that’s a big claim, so where am I coming from?

I’d suggest that in the real world (or offline) no one ever buys ‘content’. They do, of course, buy newspapers, books, magazines, reports, directories etc… all of which are brands – or bought mainly because of the brand and only on occasions because of the content.

When I buy a newspaper, I am buying a package. Yes, I get ‘content’, but that content is wrapped within a brand.

Brands have trust and values and relationships with me and other consumers. But publishing brands have more – they have a voice – a set of coherent opinions which lead me (willingly) to see the world through the eyes of the editor or author.

I believe that in traditional form, we have always bought the brand first and content second, although I accept that we can be seduced by a headline or enticed to buy a evening paper to read the cricket score on the way home.

However, most content brand purchases are repeat purchases. I buy Animals and You for my younger daughter when I pass through the airport – I used to be interested in the free gift, but no more – as I know she likes it what ever content it contains.

So, the ‘content’ argument has only occured because the internet allows us to break up the brands into pieces of content. This was never possible before – you couldn’t buy a single article from The Times Newspaper, so the question never arose.

But here is the interesting thing. I love the new layout on Yahoo.com. It allows me to place all my favourite brands – and even my own brands – on the left hand column – so every morning I can review all the new headlines from my favourite brands before I decide which to read.

My use of google has fallen – and I probably spend 90% of my time on my favourite brand sites. I bet yours has too?

We are beginning to see the creation and defense of internet publishing brands.

So, I think we – as consumers – begin from the aggregate or brand.

Take a novel even. You may argue that you buy the novel because of its content? I would disagree. You can not sample the content of a novel until you have read it – at which point you either don’t need to buy it or just return it to the library. However, some people do buy their favourite books that they have already read (from the library).

Music is different – as you can sample or even listen to the whole track on the radio before you buy it. Hence, it makes sense to sell tracks on the internet – but books are not the same.

With books I am buying into the brand – the brand of the author, the review on the back cover, the brand of the bookshop, how it feels in my hand or how it is laid out before my eyes on a screen. I may also be seduced by the price offer or the title or the smell of the book. I may even sample the content – read a page or two – but this is just to confirm that the contents are as I expect them to be – that they are consistent with the branding messages.

The reason Huffington post (a free online newspaper) does well is because it is a very powerful brand. One of its brand values is free access and make a donation – that is written into its DNA. I wouldn’t like to run this publication as it is deeply political and close to fund raising and quite a long way from publishing – but that is what it is.

I don’t expect my favourite newspaper to behave like this – and my relationship with it can be different so I’ll pay for it even though the Huffington Post might be free.

When we think first about ‘what would make you buy this brand online’ then I think we can have a debate about how to make content sell.

If a FMCG company starts from ‘how to make money from my online brand’ then one of the first things it does is start publishing or pushing ‘content’ onto Youtube etc… This makes us think that they are publishing businesses – which I would disagree. They are brands that are using publishing and broadcasting to sell. They are treating it as a marketing channel.

The challenge then, for media companies, is to ensure that their brand remains relevant for its audience and I believe that the essence of this lies in the transparency of media, which is not what you expect if you play a video game provided by a product seller.

Now, the argument is turned on its head and we ask ‘will publishing brands sell online’ we can have Polish newspaper launches (from a German publisher) making money and we can have a free to air political online newspapers.

It all makes sense – each is sticking to its brand. Which is truely the only way to make money online.