How Google is Unlocking the Hidden Ad Value in Old Media

Recently I outlined my conviction that five years from now all media will either be completely digital or well on its way to becoming intangible. Two weeks later, the trend has accelerated.

Many are questioning the future of major newspapers which, faced with declining print ad revenues, are putting themselves up for sale. Meanwhile, the Amazon Kindle is sold out until February and book publishers like Random House are racing to embrace the iPhone as the next big growth market.

However, Google is quietly throwing the media a major lifeline by digitizing old physical media. This is going to unlock the hidden value of archived content and make the media's transition from tangible to digital much easier to monetize.

For example, consider three recent moves. Google Book Search this week started to incorporate a vast print magazine archive, including back issues of New York Magazine. Google News likewise recently digitized old newspapers and Google Image Search has done the same in bringing the complete Life Magazine photo database online

So media companies are increasingly partnering with Google to bring their entire back catalog of content online. Right now only Google Book Search's magazine pages are monetized with sponsored links. But you can bet that Google will slowly and surely layer contextual search ads on top of all of these databases, create others and split the revenues with the content owners

Such a move will unlock the huge hidden value in all of this content. It will offer advertisers all kinds of new opportunities to reach consumers through pay-per-click venues. However, most importantly, it will throw publishers a huge lifeline as they make the transition from atoms to bits. Keep an eye on this space.

Comments

[Carlton Reid]

Makes absolute sense to me. Except it'll be the smaller, more mobile publishing companies that will benefit the most.

A share of this Google ad revenue won't be anywhere near enough to sustain the 'old' media companies.

They need a new monetisation model. And quick.

[Steve Poppe]

You are rockin it Steve. Keep digging.

[John Flynn]

Traditional Marketing is not just going to go away. Radio, TV, OOH and even Newspapers are going to be around for a while.

Print is obviously the weakest link.

I think we in the Social Media Marketing sector should have a goal of having ad agencies thinking about us in the same way they think about traditional marketing.

If you can get an chance to show how low our I in ROI is compared to traditional marketing we can show our worth.

Thanks for the great post.

[elguiri]

Not on the same scale of course, but we did a project, putting magazine back issues online and monetizing. The mag had no idea of the value of their "obsolete" content.

[Steve Rubel]

Archives have huge value. Look at the NY Times. It couldn't sell access tothe content through Times Select but it's monetizing it now through trafficthey get through Google searches. The more archives the media bring online,the more they will monetize either on their own or with partners likeGoogle.

[David Gosse]

Great Post Steve - well said and good insights. I often clip articles from magazines like PC World, Maximum PC, Laptop Magazine, and PC Magazine. It would be so much easier to have a better online reference point to bookmark so that I could find it when needed. Next evolution will be for people to organize what they read digitally into a mini search engine with tags that helps Google index what readers find relevant from these archives. Kinda the human brain as an algorithm to better sort through it all. Cheers.

[Onetrouser]

Now we dive in all that social media waters, but what will be if we simply get bored one day, delete all that our Facebook/Twitter profiles, close blogs and turn, lets say, to the nature. I believe that what will be 5 years later is the biggest challenge on each interactive marketers mind. Great post, anyway. Thanks!

[Karim]

Will be interesting to see what happens with old ads actually in the magazines/newspapers.

[Shel Holtz]

According to Forrester's research, print newspapers are the fifth most trusted medium -- corporate blogs are dead last. Magazines also rank highly -- and the Yellow Pages came in fourth! How do you reconcile these findings with the imminent demise of tangible media?

[Steve Rubel]

Shel, I am not saying big media is dying. Just that it's going digital baby. If you think I am aggressive, check out what my friend Mike Elgan says. We both worked for a magazine company in the 90s.

[sesli sohbet]

Will be interesting to see what happens with old ads actually in the magazines/newspapers.

[Douglas Karr]

A decade ago I worked for Landmark Communications and remember them working on digitizing content. I believe they did quite a nice job and actually monetized the archives of the newspaper I worked for, The Virginian-Pilot.

I'm not sure I'd give Google credit, but what Google does have is an audience that's large enough to profit from such an initiative.