John Battelle, A New Idea for Publishing, Technology Review, January 2005. Excerpt: '[T]he Internet’s interactivity suggests an alternative economy in which the long-standing imbalance between publisher, audience, and advertiser could be corrected. A system of Internet-based marketing, which I'll call Publisher-Driven Advertising, or PDA, may be soon possible. In this system, publishers would pick and choose from a vast supply of advertisers. The first step toward building such a system has already been taken: the pay-per-click (PPC) network. If you have ever visited Google or any content site that runs Google's ads, you've seen it....Those text-based ads on the right side of the screen represent two shifts in the traditional relationship between publishers and advertisers. First, the advertiser pays only when the ad performs --when someone clicks on the ad itself. Second, paid search networks "disaggregate" advertisers from publishers --that is, advertisers no longer purchase space on the publisher's site but instead pay for keywords....Next, imagine that, instead of buying into PPC networks or specific sites, advertisers release their ads onto the Internet. Because an Internet-based ad is already a little piece of software, it can be tagged with information about its target audience, how much the advertiser is willing to spend to reach that audience (and how much each click will cost), what kind of websites are acceptable or forbidden (such as porn sites), and any number of other attributes. Most important, each ad could communicate with a "home" application that tracks its progress and status....Why is this model better than the current one? Because publishers know their audiences best. There's no incentive for publishers to place ads that don't perform or that offend their readers.'
(PS: This system is doesn't exist yet, so we can't tell whether it would work in any publishing sector. But if it ever gets off the ground, would it work for scholarly journals? Advertising needn't pay all the bills at an OA journal in order to generate helpful revenue.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/06/2005 03:25:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
