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The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising

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Re: The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising

#31

Post by netcan »

DanBC wrote: post #15
netcan wrote: post #13

Sounds like an interesting guy. I think he’s slightly underestimating or misunderstanding the “VC backed frivolousness” though. No one knew that a search engine could generate 20-30bn p/a in advertising revenue until it did. Even Facebook, taking their advertising “stock” into a more mature existing market didn’t know what it was worth in advance. No one knew that TV advertising would be worth what it is/was until th…

> OTOH, I’m not sure that journalistically The Economist really does do some difficult task that no one else can do They get people to pay for it, which is where others seem to fail.

People also pay for books about current affairs. I was not suggesting that it is not legitimate, just sort of wondering about where they are in the bigger picture of journalism as a business, as a part of democracy..

Re: The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising

#32

Post by netcan »

ghaff wrote: post #25
netcan wrote: post #13

Sounds like an interesting guy. I think he’s slightly underestimating or misunderstanding the “VC backed frivolousness” though. No one knew that a search engine could generate 20-30bn p/a in advertising revenue until it did. Even Facebook, taking their advertising “stock” into a more mature existing market didn’t know what it was worth in advance. No one knew that TV advertising would be worth what it is/was until th…

>OTOH, I’m not sure that journalistically The Economist really does do some difficult task that no one else can do. I mean, the difficult part is investigative journalism is it not? It's a reasonable point that The Economist isn't really in the business of breaking news. I had never really thought about it but you're right. I'm sure they wouldn't be opposed to doing so but it's not their focus. (Not that deep investi…

That's just it, that kind of writing is somewhat peripheral to the core of journalism, at least the definition of journalism which is an institution essential to democracy. It's more stylistically similar to an academic writing a public consumption book chronicling events of the last year than it is to reports from a journalist currently embedded with the propaganda arm of ISIS in Syria.

One can be done from your office at the university, perhaps making extensive use of skype and good contacts.

I have no problem with the economist, I read it. I just don't expect that this kind of writing will be in danger, regardless of the business environment.

Re: The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising

#33

Post by hamidpalo »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #3

The interesting thing with the Economist is that they alone seem to be able to do what they do. A weekly editorial summary of news and relevant stories that people pay for, which is read by business people. Is there a competing magazine? I am not aware of it. Their content is unrivalled, although you really need to be aware of their biases. But I don't feel they try to hide them, rather the opposite. However, with so…

The really interesting thing is that the Economist has been able to increase their rates while still growing subscriptions. Their digital subscription is as much as print as well. They have been blessed by a wealthy readership that is price-insensitive.

I subscribe and would probably continue to subscribe if they jacked up their rates to $200/yr.

Re: The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising

#34

Post by gshubert17 »

cschmidt wrote: post #29
netcan wrote: post #13

Sounds like an interesting guy. I think he’s slightly underestimating or misunderstanding the “VC backed frivolousness” though. No one knew that a search engine could generate 20-30bn p/a in advertising revenue until it did. Even Facebook, taking their advertising “stock” into a more mature existing market didn’t know what it was worth in advance. No one knew that TV advertising would be worth what it is/was until th…

> Sounds like an interesting guy. I think his twitter feed @tomstandage is very interesting. He's kind of the cool uncle who knows about lots of fun things going on. He's written a number of books like "History of the Worlds in 6 glasses", which I enjoyed. http://www.amazon.com/Tom-Standage/e/B001H6N3PK/ He plays the drums, and he is (or at least was the last time I checked) in charge of the "back half" of the Econom…

He's an engaging writer. I enjoyed several of his books: The Victorian Internet[0], The Turk[1], and The Neptune File [2].

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Nineteen...

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Turk-Eighteenth-Century-Chess-Play...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Neptune-File-Astronomical-Pioneers...

Re: The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising

#35

Post by untog »

drpgq wrote: post #4

"The other thing about ads is that 41 percent of millennials are using ad block. My daughter has ad block and she goes around infecting every machine she gets to. She puts it on everything." Didn't realize that ad block was that popular with millennials. I was always thought it was more popular with those that were tech savvy regardless of age.

But those millenials also overwhelmingly use mobile, so I'm not sure what the overall effect is there.

Re: The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising

#36

Post by oconnore »

untog wrote: post #35
drpgq wrote: post #4

"The other thing about ads is that 41 percent of millennials are using ad block. My daughter has ad block and she goes around infecting every machine she gets to. She puts it on everything." Didn't realize that ad block was that popular with millennials. I was always thought it was more popular with those that were tech savvy regardless of age.

But those millenials also overwhelmingly use mobile, so I'm not sure what the overall effect is there.

You can install adblock and uBlock on mobile (and it's probably even more valuable, since you have less data to spare)

Re: The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising

#37

Post by ghaff »

netcan wrote: post #32
ghaff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>OTOH, I’m not sure that journalistically The Economist really does do some difficult task that no one else can do. I mean, the difficult part is investigative journalism is it not? It's a reasonable point that The Economist isn't really in the business of breaking news. I had never really thought about it but you're right. I'm sure they wouldn't be opposed to doing so but it's not their focus. (Not that deep investi…

That's just it, that kind of writing is somewhat peripheral to the core of journalism, at least the definition of journalism which is an institution essential to democracy. It's more stylistically similar to an academic writing a public consumption book chronicling events of the last year than it is to reports from a journalist currently embedded with the propaganda arm of ISIS in Syria. One can be done from your off…

I agree up to a point. There is a lot of value in curating expertise and bringing it together in one quality place.

That said, for kicks I looked through The Economist's media directory and it is indeed pretty London-centric. While I have no doubt that its correspondents are quite knowledgable about their beats (and I assume have plenty of good contacts), it's not like The Economist has a lot of big foreign bureaus.

Re: The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising

#38

Post by mike_hearn »

netrus wrote: post #8
timclark wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Der Spiegel is a high quality weekly news magazine that I think compares favourably to The Economist if you read German.

I guess it's time to take a look at Der Spiegel again, but if I remember correctly, their focus is much more centered on Germany, Europe and the West, while the Economist has news from the whole world. And it's articles are short enough to read the whole magazine every week.

The other thing about Der Spiegel is they seem to enjoy provocative/trolling articles more frequently than TE (though TE goes in for this as well from time to time). For instance Der Spiegel seems to pretty frequently write long but vague pieces about how Silicon Valley is taking over the world, will our new techno-overlords be benevolent, etc. Whereas TE tends to treat the tech industry more as an interesting specimen of butterfly to be dispassionately studied.

How much that reflects Germanic vs Anglo views of the world, I don't know. But having read articles in Der Spiegel very occasionally, it gave me a pretty different vibe.

Re: The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising

#39

Post by mike_hearn »

bambax wrote: post #12
drpgq wrote: post #4

"The other thing about ads is that 41 percent of millennials are using ad block. My daughter has ad block and she goes around infecting every machine she gets to. She puts it on everything." Didn't realize that ad block was that popular with millennials. I was always thought it was more popular with those that were tech savvy regardless of age.

I have yet to meet someone who's aware of AdBlock's existence and doesn't use it...

Me. I don't use it, never have.

Are ads annoying - sure. But so are paywalls, so are websites that are entirely VC funded and desperately growth hacking until they can sell out to a bigger company.

The web is an expensive thing, very expensive. By not blocking ads I'm doing my bit to help fund it. I see ad blocking as a lot like piracy: understandable in some cases, but still basically freeloading on those of us who support the creation of the content.

Re: The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of advertising

#40

Post by mike_hearn »

ghaff wrote: post #25
netcan wrote: post #13

Sounds like an interesting guy. I think he’s slightly underestimating or misunderstanding the “VC backed frivolousness” though. No one knew that a search engine could generate 20-30bn p/a in advertising revenue until it did. Even Facebook, taking their advertising “stock” into a more mature existing market didn’t know what it was worth in advance. No one knew that TV advertising would be worth what it is/was until th…

>OTOH, I’m not sure that journalistically The Economist really does do some difficult task that no one else can do. I mean, the difficult part is investigative journalism is it not? It's a reasonable point that The Economist isn't really in the business of breaking news. I had never really thought about it but you're right. I'm sure they wouldn't be opposed to doing so but it's not their focus. (Not that deep investi…

They did try it once. They had some original investigative journalism of some horrendously convoluted oil deals, or something. I forget the details. It was rather boring.
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