A two-day conference on the Power of the Tablet at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies this week featured Dr. Mario Garcia who believes tablets will be the platform of choice for a growing number of users, and would like to see newsrooms appoint a dedicated tablet edition editor.
“We will probably have to wait for many editors to die, some may be younger than me,” he told Paid Content’s Staci Kramer.
PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts the entertainment and media industries will go through great turmoil over the next five years.
The Internet is poised to overtake newspapers as the second-largest U.S. advertising medium by revenue behind television, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The online ad business, excluding mobile ads, is set to expand to $34.4 billion in 2014 from $24.2 billion in 2009, according to the report. Newspapers, meanwhile, have declining ad revenue. According to numbers released by the Newspaper Association of America earlier this year, print advertising revenue dropped 28.6% in 2009 to $24.82 billion. The PwC report estimates that print advertising in newspapers will hit $22.3 billion by 2014.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers:
“Some companies perceive the continuing fragmentation of the market as a threat but it should be seized upon as an opportunity. It offers companies the chance for creativity around the approaches to their buyers, be it via traditional channels to market or, more importantly, by embracing social media.”
Whatever the partnership or collaboration PricewaterhouseCoopers sees seven critical factors for operating succesfully in the new value chain:
- Strategic flexibility
- Delivery of engagement and relationship with the customer through the consumption experience
- Economics of scale and scope
- Speed of decision-making and execution, with the appetite to experiment and fail
- Agility in talent management
- Ability to monetise brand/rights across platforms
- Strong capabilities in partnership structuring and M&A targeting and integration
Increased broadband penetration will boost wired access while growing smartphone penetration and wireless network upgrades will drive mobile access, says PriceWaterhouse. Spending on wired and mobile Internet access will rise from US$228 billion in 2009 to US$351 billion in 2014.
Social media, news, games and television are re-combining in this Primordial Soup. Mobile platforms are the place to be. Tablets are the new reality:
- Tablet ads can charge 50% of print, while web ads generate only 10%.
- Combine subscription revenue with advertising.
- Virtually eliminate distribution costs and delay.
- Integrate social media, video and game apps.
What’s not to like? Of course many broadcasters, cable operators and print publications will be unable to survive this transformation.
