Flipboard Furthering Traditional Advertising

As a former journalist and publisher-in-training, I read about 5-10 different websites a day giving me information on trends in the media industry. My must reads are:

http://www.gawker.com/

http://www.adage.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/

http://www.ajc.com/ (for local news, though I think the AJC has a long way to go).

During the week I also check in on the following sites and wheatever else catches my eye.

http://www.salon.com/

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/

http://www.wallstreetjournal.com/ (though I do believe Rupert Murdoch is inherently evil)

http://www.valleywag.com/

http://www.jalopnik.com/

http://www.digg.com/

Moreover, I'm particularly keen on watching trends for how traditional media integrate with new technology to deliver content to their readership and then market that readership to advertisers,

Currently our industry is in a sort of vertigo because newspapers and magazines can't establish a concrete business model to generate revenue from the electronic versions of their products.

Here’s an interesting article today about traditional publishers (Washington Post, Bon Apetit, etc.) buying into a new app for iPad called “Flipboard”.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=147398

It takes links on a publication's web site and turns them into a beautiful ad that displays on the iPad. This article caught my attention today with this key phrase:  

Flipboard Pages advertisers will get data back on who is interacting with the ads and what they do with them. "In traditional media, social behaviors are impossible to track. We will look at the amount of impressions, the interactivity and see how often things are shared."

Wouldn’t it be great if we could give our advertisers the same data? A mobile user could click on a link from our publication and suddenly a beautiful full page ad from one of our advertisers appears on their device. We could then tell our advertisers exactly how many people view their ad and their subsequent activity.

Plus then we can charge advertisers not only for the ad but the data that comes from its placement.

I do believe that print media will continue to survive but in a different form. Electronic mass media is the true way of the future and early innovators (particularly in publishing) will be the strongest longterm players.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on the changes in the media industry below or email me at thelaurenpatrick@gmail.com