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Online publishing is continuously attracting both commercial and corporate publishers through new
interactive technologies because application of these technologies captures the imagination of both
content provider and the public. Earlier, business was not much benefited by online publishing; the
reasons being online publishers were not experienced with selling and understanding of business to
them was also very poor. Businesses were attracting towards web but failed to define even business
purposes driving their online presence. Then publishers realized that mere presence on the web can
not guarantee success. Exciting technology without relevant content can not drive profits or capture
market share. More attention is needed towards tricky delivering of content for successful online
publishing.
Business organizations are now investing huge amount in people, equipment, marketing, brand
building, and contents to find the best way to capture the consumers attention and in search of
business model that could make these firms profitable sooner than later but have not been able to
figure out which business model works best for money making. However, new models are being
developed by online publishers to convince customers for justified charges of unique and valuable
information, programme, and services offered to them.
As more and more firms begin to offer online content, these are forced to adjust to new customer
attitudes regarding pricing. In the offline business, publishers charge large advertising fees from the
firms by offering mass markets for delivering message. News, information, and entertainment are
expected to be almost free for general public and that advertisers will pay the bill. This concept is not
practical in online marketplace where instead of mass marketing, one-to-one marketing is considered.
Customers select their information and delivery methods but are not eager to pay online content. The
size of customers and their habits are nearly impossible to figure out. Even new advertising models
can not be claimed to draw profits on the internet. While ad revenues are not coming close to
covering expenses, now they could grow substantially in coming years as the traffic increases and
brand names become established. Brand development is important because every time a user sits in
front of a web browser needs to make decision about where to go. The better the brand, more likely it
is to popup in the consumers mind.
One more important aspect in online publishing relates to digital copyrights. The internet makes it
extremely easy to copy, retransmit, and alter works without the permission of the copyright holder.
Moreover, the digital world has no internal boundaries, and policing is impossible since the levels of
protections and sanctions against infringement vary widely in countries across the globe, which
makes the risk even greater. Clearly, without effective protection, publishers are not willing to risk
their investment and hard work.
The web has suffered from the same drawbacks, which beset multimedia publishing in its infancy a
lack of business direction and the hi-jacking of operations by technologies without any business
knowledge. It is important that publishers identify the product they are selling and its suitability for
on-line delivery. Electronic goods consist of electronic journals, magazines and newspapers,
electronic books, multimedia CD-ROM, software, computer games, music, and online databases.
Digital goods and services are those whose purchase and delivery can only be conducted via
electronic channels. Thus electronic publishing products are well suited to this medium of production
and delivery. The products most suited to electronic commerce are on-line databases and electronic
journals, magazines and newspapers as these can be accessed, paid for and delivered directly to the
users PC.
Reasons for Online Publishing
At this moment, it is also necessary to debate on what exactly is meant by online publishing. It is an
act of disseminating information. Online publishing can also be viewed as the activity of publishing
for sale. Publishers package their product as a bundled commodity rather than disjointed information
in order to realize revenue from their information.
In the late 1960s the concept of online publishing evolved out of public funding associated with the
aerospace and medical research programmes. Many of the publishers switched from manual
typesetting and printing to computer-assisted photo composition and developed their databases.
Earlier photo compositions were very expensive and not able to offer much variety but enabled the
creation of a central database from which a series of online services could be provided. Improved
communication networks, availability of low-cost terminals, and remote access and dialup database
systems were the other technical developments that put a great impact on online publishing.
Online publishing is increasingly popular in works of fiction as well as with scientific articles. Online
publishers are able to provide quick gratification for late-night readers, books that customers might
not be able to find in standard book retailers, and books by new authors that would be unlikely to be
profitable for traditional publishers.
Internet and web recently have brought online publishing from a niche target audience to a mass
audience. The reasons for the sudden increase in the interest of publishers, advertisers, and content
providers in the web include:
1. Rapid evolution of technology and acceptance of web at large made it possible to meet time-
to-market requirements that were even beyond imagination a few years back.
2. It is not necessary to invest huge amount in advance for uncertain returns rather much of the
investment in infrastructure has been made by others such as Internet Service Providers
(ISPs), hardware companies, and various software developers.
3. It allows publishers to interact with large number of customers in a mass market by exploring
new ways of targeting and reaching customers.
4. As compared to conventional media, publishing and advertising involve less of egos and
financial interests of powerful multiple-system cable television operators, television network,
and group broadcasters.
Management Issues
Creating organization for online publishing
Selection of business model to ensure success in different segments of online publishing
Online customers satisfaction and the ways to keep the customers loyal
The Online Archive Approach: This approach include bibliographic databases and full-text
search/retrieval services already existing in digital archive of the corporate publishers, and, to some
extent of commercial publishers such as academic or journal publishers that is desired by them to be
delivered over the web as well as on paper, CD-ROM, or other media.
Library catalogs and bibliographic databases are the most prevalent example of online archive
approach. Traditional card catalogs are being replaced with sophisticated electronic online
bibliographic databases in most of the libraries and offering an incredible range of functions.
MEDLINE, developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is a bibliographic database that
caters to an increasing number of physicians who rely on online medical databases to keep updated
with the latest developments and literature. Other medical databases are also available free of charge
on the internet.
The New Medium Approach: This approach includes real-time news delivery, personalized news
delivery, and edutainment. It aims at creating new material for web by the publishers to float their
own material considering web as a medium. Commercial print publishers such as magazines view the
web as an alternative for their print publications but not as a replacement. Some writers may write for
both media, but separate content streams will be developed for each medium.
Presently, this approach is facing some technological problem such as formatting on the web and
expected to overcome in the near future through technological advancements. Apart from these
technology constraints, the expectations of the web are also different from print media. It requires
new contents, written for web audience, must be created. But as these contents are out, they are no
longer been owned and there is a loss of intellectual content. So all the publishers try to be the
initiator with the most interesting stuff on the web for creating a platform where web audience can
see what the world has to say on a minute-by-minute basis.
The Publishing Intermediation Approach: This approach includes online directories, exploits new
service opportunities for intermediaries. There is always a need for a good directory to help people
locate goods, services, and products. Publishing intermediaries offer ease of operation, speed and
detailed information to the customers and so are always in demand. Yahoo (Yet Another Hierarchical
Officious Oracle) created in 1994 by David Filo and Jerry Yang specializes in providing the service
and has emerged as key player. Yahoo is at the first place millions of internet users go when they try
to find their way around the rapidly growing internet. It helps in creating a marketplace for
conducting e-commerce through internet. Customers can find more companies, products, and
services on the sprawling network.
The Dynamic and Just-in-Time Publishing Approach: In this technological environment, contents
can be created in real-time and transmitted to the users location even in the format according to their
tastes and preferences. The elements of these dynamic contents are text, graphics, video, and sound
which are stored separately in a database. The content engine recognizes repeat visitors to a site and
configures the web pages to match the individuals known preferences. Publishers need not to author
and update a large product catalog but create individualized pages for each user browsing the site on
internet.
Dynamic publishing can also be seen in the form of just-in-time publishing. As and when the
consumers need stories, applets etc. into the computer, get the content flow just-in-time, and then
these dynamic contents self-destruct after usage. One question arises how payments are collected on
a product by a business operating in small-amount transaction market. Publishers and developers
should be thinking about micropayments which are essential for this marketplace. For low-value
payments to work, transaction costs must be very small.
Advertising spending is the amount that advertisers pay to other web sites such as periodicals and
games to display their icons or product offerings. Though internet advertising is continuously gaining
popularity, online publishers need to measure how much money has to be spent on advertising
because of the following reasons:
1. What advertising expenses need to be counted is not defined clearly.
2. The market is too small to justify the cost of measuring its size.
3. The market is changing too rapidly to develop an effective means of measurement.
Researchers indicate that only 10 percent of web surfers currently click on ad banners. As internet
advertising rates are usually determined by the size of a sites overall audience, less revenue is
expected to generate for web sites.
Measurement of Effective Online Advertising
There is an old saying in advertising that I know half my advertising dollars are wasted - I just dont
know which half! But, on the web, advertisers do know, since they can track how many site visitors
come from which ads. As a matter of fact, advertisers can continue tracking the users as some of
them change from site tourists into paying customers. Only loyal users have lasting value for the site.
Measurement of online advertising effectiveness is presently at a fairly immature state. Determining
the objectivity of amount spent on a specific ad in traditional advertising is very difficult in terms of
the sales of products or services and profits generated by it. Internet technology makes it easier to
justify the cost of advertising as advertisers can get information in the form of electronic trail about
where the uses came from, what they did at a site and whether they purchased a product from the
website. This electronic trail may enable advertisers to identify and correct problems with their
advertising. Web advertising should be valued in terms of the value of the business it creates from the
new users it attracts to the site. This value is usually very small, which is why web advertising works
poorly and (while not completely useless) will be one of the smallest contributors to the future of the
Web.
In theory, the main benefit of the web as an advertising medium is its measurability. Unlike a
billboard, it is possible to measure when someone has seen an ad. Unlike television, it is possible to
tell when someone has bought a product as a result of seeing the ad. Real life is harder than theory. It
is not easy to measure web advertising and there is no single solution to the problem. Each step of the
web advertising process requires different measurement tools and techniques and there are challenges
at every step.
Sampling tools can report on measures of branding, such as unduplicated reach and frequency of
exposure. Survey-based planning tools can also report on users subjective experience of the
campaign, measuring recall and brand attitudes. There is a longstanding religious debate about the
importance of branding vs. direct marketing in web advertising. While branding is part of the goal of
web advertising, direct marketing is a larger part. Web marketers want to increase and improve
customers perception of their company, but most marketers evaluate web advertising by its
effectiveness at driving traffic and generating customers.
cAd networks provide post-click tracking services which let an advertiser see whether a customer has
clicked through from an ad and then whether that customer has bought or registered. These services
typically use single-pixel GIFs that report back to the ad server when a customer clicks through to a
site, when they reach key pages, and when they have completed a purchase. Information about the
purchase is passed back through the URL of the buy-page. Using cookies, these systems can even tell
when the same visitor has returned to the site several days later to buy.
The reports from these network-based systems allow advertisers to compare results for different
pieces of a campaign - by ad, or by site, or by target audience. Advertisers can assess performance by
a variety of measures, including impressions, clickthroughs, and registration or sales conversions.
When cost information is plugged in, the system can calculate the ROI for an advertising campaign.
Reporting systems provided by advertising networks have an important advantage that they give
advertisers pinpoint control over the ad. An advertiser can look at a campaign report, see that a
particular banner or site is performing miserably, and change the ad or the allocation. However, this
approach also has weaknesses. Because these reporting systems often are not tied directly into the
site's commerce server, they are limited in the amount of information they can gather about the
transaction. For example, they might pick up the amount of the sale, but not the number of products
purchased, or the type of products. Also, without talking to the site's registration system, it is harder
for a network-based system to track unique visitors when they return to a site.
Moreover, reporting systems that are based on an advertising server only track the effectiveness of
ads, they dont pick up referrals from affiliate programs, keyword searches, partner site referrals, and
other parts of an interactive marketing strategy. The same limitation is true of affiliate reporting
services.
Measurement systems based at a web site, on the other hand, are able to track customers entry to the
site from many sources: advertisements and affiliates, search terms and partner links. Web site-based
measurement systems are able to tie into the site's commerce server and report directly on the
amounts and types of products purchased. Site-based tools can tie into the site's user-tracking and
registration database, reporting when a customer buys days or weeks after visiting the first time. Site-
based tools can provide customer segmentation capability, enabling marketers to evaluate the results
of ads based on criteria that are meaningful to the site. Finally, and most important in the long run,
site-based marketing data can be analyzed along with offline marketing and cost data within the
company to provide a picture of the lifetime value of the customer. Ultimately, this is the critical
calculation that tells the business whether the customer has been acquired profitably. The chief
drawback of site-based measurement systems is that they don't give advertisers a chance to adjust
campaigns in real time.
Methods of Measuring Ad Visitors
There are many ways that ad traffic, effectiveness and exposure are calculated. Here are some of the
most popular methods.
Click-through rate: The percentage of viewers who clicked on a particular ad versus the total
number of viewers who were exposed to that ad. It measures the amount of immediate responses
generated by an ad.
Conversion rate: The percentage of viewers who take a desired action, including service
subscriptions, downloads, registrations or sales. It entails any action other than browsing.
Hits: Total number of requests for delivery of a file on a server. It is an unreliable way to measure ad-
generated traffic. When a user requests a page, that web page along with any graphic or textual
elements are each counted as a hit.
Impression: The number of times a specific ad is downloaded, and therefore the number of
exposures. The impression count does not count a user's repeat visits during the same session.
Page View: A record of each time a page is requested by a viewer. It is similar to a hit, but additional
elements of a page are not counted separately. A high page view rate is good for Web sites that rely
on advertising as a major source of revenue.
Unique Visitors: the number of separate individuals who visit a site within a specific time period,
regardless of repeat visitors. This rate is usually calculated over a 30-day span. Unique visitors are
determined by the user's IP address and cookies.