Remember how newspaper and magazine publishers got annoyed with Amazon because Amazon did not give them the subscriber demographic information they wanted?
Well, guess what? As the Wall Street Journal reports, it seems that Apple isn’t any better.
As electronic editions of magazines like Time and Popular Science sell like hotcakes even at the somewhat ridiculous newsstand price of $4.99 per issue (whatever happened to e- being cheaper due to distribution cost savings?), some publishers are trying to figure out their own alternate payment and distribution schemes to avoid having to give Apple a 30% cut of the take while still not getting the subscriber demographic information they want.
"We own that consumer. This is a critical part of our business model," said Philippe Guelton, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., which publishes Elle, Car and Driver and Woman’s Day magazines. Hachette doesn’t sell its magazines through iTunes.
But it isn’t just a matter of pitching a fit because they don’t get that “ownership”. Publishers use demographic data in planning their marketing strategies and special offers.
Some publishers, such as Newsweek’s digital unit’s general manager Geoff Reiss, are more sanguine about Apple’s storefront: "The idea of reintroducing all kinds of friction in order to get a bunch of information that may or may not be applicable, I don’t think serves either us or the consumer particularly well."
But others are still more nervous about it.
At a February meeting with Time Inc. editors and executives, Josh Quittner, editor-at-large for Time magazine, asked Steve Jobs how much subscriber data Apple would permit magazines on the iPad. "Some," the Apple chief executive said simply, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Quittner pressed for a fuller explanation. "Some," Mr. Jobs repeated.
Apple, of course, declined to comment about any of it.
Publishers are going to have to decide just how far they’re willing to compromise. Is being on the Apple and Amazon storefronts worth the loss of the demographic information? The answer may change over the years as the platforms broaden their user base.
Electronic may be cheaper, but if you net out ad revenue, I suspect Time, etc. is making less on the electronic versions even at $4.99. It’s much harder to force readers to see ads when they have the power of electronics at their service. Which is great from the reader’s perspective but less so from the advertiser’s, and it’s advertisers who call the shots.
Rob Preece
Publisher
No, Rob, in this case you are most definitely wrong. It is Apple who is calling the shots — not publishers, not advertisers, not consumers. If it weren’t so, it would only be because Jobs had a religious epiphany that caused him to see that sharing can be good for everyone and hoarding for no one.
“We own that consumer?” Hmmm, maybe Mr. Guelton should’ve phrased that a bit better.
Many publications relt on demographics to portray their advertising as “targeted”; without it they can no longer justify their current rates. So this is a serious issue. Albeit one they should have settled before jumping lemming-like unto the iPad hype express. If the idiots didn’t do their homework… (Shrug)
Maybe the publishers should just get together with a few Asian hardware manufacturers and define their own Open Tablet specification? Subsidize the hardware through subscriptions and bypass Apple and Amazon.
The truth is, their readership demographics are not going to shift THAT much at all, from where it is. It is probably their current readership, except that some of those also have iPads Kindles or Nooks.