An Outsell Insights report from Outsell Affiliate Analyst, Ken Doctor…

Both the New York Times Company and Dow Jones, parent of the Wall Street Journal, are seeking new CEOs. Those two leaders will make or break the future of their companies.

Important Details: While Europeans are used to multiple national newspapers, Americans — living across a broad 3500-mile (5632 km) expanse — look to no more than three. Of those, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are clearly the agenda-setters, with Gannett’s USA Today more of a populist read.

Both the Times and the Journal — locked in mortal combat for readers and advertising revenue — have been looking for new leaders.

The Journal’s immediate parent, Dow Jones, lost its CEO in July. Then, 52-year News Corp employee Les Hinton stepped down, amid the beginnings of that company’s Hackgate scandal in the UK. The company is now in talks with former Bloomberg CEO Lex Fenwick about taking the position.

The Times’ opening appeared unexpectedly just before the holidays. Long-time CEO Janet Robinson wasforced out, as the company-controlling Sulzberger family sold its Regional Newspaper Group properties to Halifax Media, and family member Michael Golden, who’d been president of the group, planned a return to the mothership from Florida. The company is now looking outside of the family, and most likely the company, for a successor.

The CEO succession questions occur as the US industry is seeing a speeding up in the pace of business transformation. While advertising revenue still hasn’t seen a positive quarter since 2006, the innovation of the tablet as a replacement news reader and the inroads of digital circulation programs (at least 10% of American dailies have a paywall of one kind or another), are creating great business model change.

In addition, there’s a more fluid, if directionally uncertain, movement of sales of newspaper properties.

“In 2011, there were 11 separate daily newspaper transactions equaling $788 million in volume, which has been the most daily newspapers sold since 2007, when 91 newspapers were sold representing $20 billion in volume,” Owen Van Essen, one of the country’s largest industry brokers, recently noted.

The ferment is palpable, even if much of it is going on behind the scenes. Job cuts continues apace — as the only route to continued profitability — and major executive and property changes accompany them.

It is a time of unprecedented transformation for everyone, but for these two companies, the CEO choice is game-making or game-breaking.

In the next several years, news companies are seeing their world finally turned upside down, with all the growth coming from digital, and its cousin, all-access digital/phone access.

As Outsell has outlined most recently in Information Outlook 2012: Break and Reset, this digital transition isn’t just about serving readers or advertisers on mobile devices. It’s about a fundamental rethinking of how the businesses operate, and how they learn from the GAFA companies to become real-time optimization companies. That optimization will be absolutely essential for satisfying sellers of goods and services, aka advertisers. Transactional models, led by business buster Amazon, are competing with impression-based models in ways unforeseen. So the next CEO of the Journal and of the Times must prepare his or her company to play and to partner, or wither. Both can look down the road at USA Today, the Gannett-owned daily once clearly #1 in national circulation, and now facing business oblivion as the world passes it by.

Analytics becomes the energy driving these businesses.

For consumers of news and information, these two CEOs find themselves swimming in oceans of opportunity. News is now truly ubiquitous; its monetization far less so. Deciding where and how to bet on this ubiquity — connected TV, iPad 8, the Facebookization of the web, aligning media with the digital education revolution — likewise will separate out the fortunes of the Times from the Journal, and both from the many other competitors eating away at their current core businesses.

Tags Information Industry

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An Outsell Insights report from Outsell Affiliate, Frank Gilbane…

GE has announced a $1 billion investment in software development to provide big data services to industrial clients. Will they go beyond their client base?

Important Details: General Electric has announced that it is investing $1 billion in a new global software headquarters outside San Francisco which will house around 400 newly-hired software developers.

GE already has a $2.5 billion software business and approximately 5,000 software engineers, and its software business has grown as software has continued to play an ever-larger role in automating and connecting industrial machines, especially big and complex items like jet engines, trains, and medical devices. The more complex the product, the more software required. And this is mostly specialized software so it is expensive and requires years, sometimes decades of, no-doubt, high-margin service contracts.

GE, like other manufacturers of large industrial systems, has also always created and managed huge data sets. A jet engine isn’t complete without vast amounts of engineering, technical support and logistics data in multiple types of documents and databases. Sometimes this information is sold as is with the product, but it is often maintained by GE as a service for clients. Increasingly, embedded chips and software spew out streams of additional real-time information. This puts GE in the position of being able to collect and analyze data about how its products are being used, sometimes including what data is being gathered, how users are behaving, and how successful engineering change orders are in different circumstances. GE may also be able to collect peripheral data which could be valuable for informing future designs, or recipes for alloys.

GE talks about “smart grids” and the “industrial internet”, which is simply an industrial-strength “internet of things”. It has expertise in both software and data, and sees opportunity in leveraging this combination to compete in both existing and new markets as the need for big data analytics spreads. GE will need to compete with traditional competitors like Siemens, but also with software companies like IBM. While IBM may know more about software, it won’t know as much about jet engines, so there is a competitive advantage for GE.

Implications: It is interesting that the Financial Times reported the announcement as a big data play, while the Wall Street Journal described it as a software announcement. Both are true, but the different focus illustrates one area of market confusion on just what big data is. As we mentioned in our August 2011 report Big Data: Big Deal or Just Big Buzz?, there is no official definition for big data, but the characteristic that has the most consensus is data that is too big to be managed by traditional database technology. Big data then is typically defined by the technology used to manage, process and analyze it. Outsell adds the requirement that the result allows for “emergent information”, information that wasn’t available or accessible previously. GE is as capable of gleaning new information from large complex data sets as anyone, and since it controls much of it, has an advantage. GE doesn’t talk about the database technology it is using, and why should it? While the most well known big data commercial offerings are based on Hadoop, there is no requirement to either use it or talk about it.

GE is in the position of already either owning or managing huge data sets for industry and government customers, and owning software to manage and analyze the data. This provides a clear opportunity to provide additional highly-profitable data services to its client base, and the possibility to sell information products beyond the customer base. GE Energy already provides data, and an obvious question is whether/how much GE will go beyond selling data and services to customers of its industrial systems. Will it start selling data that is not core to its competitiveness? Why not?

Outsell believes that big data services are an opportunity for information providers, and for some should even be a core competence. The GE announcement is instructive as a reminder that other industries will be adding the capability to deliver information products and services, and that the information industry is continuing to change.

Tags big data

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Outsell’s been getting a ton of questions recently about content licensing and partnerships. As the world has gone ‘platform’ (see our Outlook 2009 about the emergence of platforms vs. products), publishers and information providers are catching up and realizing that owning a platform or a workflow means thinking ‘user and application first’ which often leads to big fat hole in the content portfolio needed to provide holistic solutions and compelling products.

Many publishers have licensed content for years but the rules of engagement remain wide open even while the issue heats up. As we get questions, we thought we’d share Outsell’s top 10 considerations for licensing. These guidelines apply to both licensors (you are licensing your content to third-parties) and to licensees (you are seeking to use another parties’ content in your products and services.)

To develop this top 10 list, we worked with Outsell affiliate, Rich Kreisman, one of our resident experts on licensing who has been at the forefront of licensing content and software for years, understanding issues for publisher’s licensing-out or aggregators and websites who are licensing-in. So here are some of the critical rules of the road:

1) Be Clear on Target Market -Yours and Theirs. At Outsell, that means clearly understanding both the user roles and the vertical industry associated with your own product roadmap as well as adjacent markets that your content may be serving. Then, start your conversation with a licensee about their target markets – both current and future markets.

At the core of channel strategy is target market, and while this sounds basic, we have seen publishers create unnecessary channel conflict or spend time in licensing conversations with firms that really don’t add relevant incremental markets (thus revenues) that build a brand. These efforts are dilutive rather than accretive. In a worst-case scenario, where proper analysis and consideration is not given to channels, you may be facilitating a dangerous competitive entry into your business.

2) Business Models Guide Pricing, Not the Other Way Around – Probe and explore your licensees’ business models before entering into a specific discussion on pricing. Whether to use a royalty or a fixed fee when licensing content or data can frequently best be determined by looking at how the content will be used in a partners’ products and by understanding how those products are priced. Is the partner adding third-party content thru a direct upsell to their own customers or blending your data into an existing offering with the hopes of charging more or simply staying competitive?

These first two rules of the road are really important distinctions and matter in terms of how best to structure a deal: Should you wholesale your content to the partner? White-label it so that you are transparent to their end-users? Or, should you be the ‘Intel inside’ or “Powered by XYZ firm” because extending your brand presence in the licensees’ markets is valuable?

3) Fully Understand Why The Partner Wants the Content - Is it to remain competitive or, because the content creates something unique in their application. Most importantly, do they want 20/80 – the 20% of the crown jewels that drive 80% of an originator’s’ value to the end-user?

Knowing how the data will be used – straight pass-through, in a mash-up or as part of a new content set — is critical to determine how to play in the licensing negotiation. Knowing whether you are part of a partner’s COGs or part of an important new value-added revenue stream are important distinctions to make prior to entering full-on negotiations. And, always remember: You will always think your content is more valuable than anyone else, so be prepared with facts to make a good argument as to its value in a partner’s model.

4) Recognize the Amazing Array of Potential Uses for Your Content. Most publishers create their information with a clear user or market, in mind. However, inevitably, if the data is of high-quality, others will find it to be of great value, too. You are not likely to always understand all of those alternate users, so licensing your content to others who do find it of use is an essential part of growing your business.

5) Be Clear on Who Will Own the Customer and Who Will Get Customer Data - This is often the most critical – and contentious — item for licensing arrangements, and it is where deals can be made or lost. The closer to one’s target market the licensee is, the more branding and ownership to want, is Outsell’s general rule of thumb. Having direct access to customer data and how end-users are consuming your content is increasingly critical in an analytics driven world as well. It may be preferable for you to be white labeled in someone else’s product, but critical to your own model to understand what a partner’s users are doing with your data.

6) Set Expectations Upfront on Key Terms. Is the deal an experiment or something to go into for the long-haul? Do you see it as a 1 year deal or a 5 year commitment? Are you seeking to find an exclusive partner in a particular channel – and getting compensated for exclusivity?

If a long-term partnership is preferred, it’s important to structure the deal so that it can be supported when the people who make the deal leave the firm or change roles. Deals are often people-dependent but , turnover is significant in the information industry and deals have to live on or languish. Understand this point going in and be clear on how the deal could logically conclude if and when it must.

7) Get Clear on the Cost of Execution. Some licensing deals are highly profitable – quick data feeds to new markets bring additional revenue at enormous margins. Others require IT, staff, process re-engineering, content re-indexing — and seemingly — lifetimes to execute.

The ROE (return on effort) is sometimes grossly underestimated when ROI is being calculated, and dollar-signs are twinkling in everyone’s eyes. Deal execution is fraught with realities. Be sure to conduct enough due diligence during the deal development process to fully understand your partners’ requirements – and then make sure you can deliver on them.

Be aware of the opportunity costs for your organization, as well. Will spending four to six months to develop a winning content license agreement give you the ROE you expect, or help you to achieve some other important strategic goal, such as obtaining a marquee new partner in advance of a fund-raising event?

8 ) Have an Expert in the Room. Too many publishers and information providers handle channel strategy like a stepchild who never was fully socialized with the rest of the family. While it’s often a smaller revenue stream, the reality is that content — however it’s licensed — sets precedent. There are a lot of complexities to licensing and it’s often done without someone who knows channel strategy, pricing, licensing terms, contracting and deal execution.

9) Leave the Lawyers Out Until The End. As with most transactions it’s best for the business people to agree on the terms and then have the lawyers translate those terms into agreements. Protecting your intellectual property and drafting license grants that exploit full value from the licensed content is an essential legal role. Lawyers can bring up the ‘gotchas’ that might be missed but having them drive the deal making is a mistake. This is where the experts come in.

10) Recognize Everything is Negotiable. Every licensing arrangement brings a clean slate based on who wants what, who needs what and what the benefits are to each party. Set pricing that dovetails with your current schemes to avoid cannibalization or confusion in the market. Follow the rules of engagement and recognize everything else is open season.

When it’s all said and done Your New Content Licensing Partner Is Exactly That…A New Partner. It is easy to work hard on negotiating a data licensing deal, then work very hard on delivery of content – and then move on. Big mistake: Once you do the deal, your partner is now part of your ecosystem.

Take a portion of the profit from your new licensing arrangement and invest it in nurturing your existing partners. Treat them as new accounts that require regular contact. Introduce them to your new products and services as you would any customer. Stop in on them when you are in their city on other business.

Licensing partners frequently have the keenest insights into your content because they have to understand it very well to execute on their product plans. Let them help you improve your current products and spur ideas for completely new products. And, then turn around and license those products back to them.

Content licensing represents an amazing eco-system within the industry and we’re here to help. We can advise into clients’ content licensing process and questions via analyst access privileges or support custom engagements where we map out potential target markets and use cases, develop licensing strategies and assist you as you execute. Let us know what you need and we’re here to help.

Tags licensing, partnering

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Author: Chuck Richard (Twitter, LinkedIn)

Audience: This report contains data and analysis providing an in-depth view into the B2B Trade Publishing & Company Information segment. It includes analysis of market trends and our forecast for this segment’s growth and performance to 2014 – Outsell forecasts that the B2B Trade Publishing & Company Information segment will more than double its growth between 2011 and 2014 compared to 2009, and grow 3.4% in 2011 to just over $23.0 billion. Additionally, we profile up-and-coming players in each subsegment and the disruptive forces they embody, as well as more established companies that are worth watching because of how they are diversifying or adapting to the market. This report provides advice and essential actions for publishers and information providers that want to create revenue opportunities, attract new buyers, and achieve competitive advantage. Equally, it supports those who cover and need greater understanding of this segment, including suppliers to the industry, investment bankers and analysts, and journalists.

Highlights:

• An overview of the B2B Trade Publishing & Company Information segment including analysis of relevant macro trends
• Forecast data and analysis for the B2B Trade Publishing & Company Information segment, 2011-2014, and for the B2B trade publishing and company information subsegments
• Forecast data and analysis for the segment, 2011-2014
• Key trends in this market
• Analysis of market drivers and the competitive landscape, including first-half 2010-2011 revenue and growth for the top companies in each subsegment



• Outsell’s “10 to Watch” in each subsegment
• Essential actions for publishers in this segment

Purchase this report from the Outsell store.

Press Inquiries: Greg Jordan, Media Relations (650-394-6522, pr@outsellinc.com)

Tags Analysis, b2b, B2B Publishing, B2B Trade Publishing, Company Information, Market Forecast, Market Trends, Publishing, Report, Trade Publishing

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One of the hot buttons in the market research community right now is all about the world of mobile. We wrote about some of activity in a recent Insight and pointed out companies like Thumbspeak and Opinionmeter.

Now we have iPerceptions also introducing new technology for sampling mobile users and a new start-up named Paradigm Sample receiving funding to grow their research arm which provides samples of mobile users.

All this is great – lots of movement, lots of action, companies going where the growth is but we are still missing one thing: Who is figuring out how to shrink the 20 minute questionnaire down to size to fit these platforms? And to then get enough survey data to provide the analysis and insights clients have come to expect. Survey takers are increasingly more mobile, so all these new solutions make sense. Big survey houses are still building long questionnaires like they always have. This will be the next challenge for the market research community.

Image via Flickr

Tags Market Research, Mobile, Mobile Devices, Mobile Market Research, Mobile Sampling, Surveys

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Author: Kate Worlock (Twitter, LinkedIn)

Audience: In this report, we focus on essential data and analysis providing an in-depth view into the Education & Training (E&T) segment, and thus will prove useful for all professionals, executives, and businesses that deal in this segment. This report includes detailed analysis of current market trends and our forecast for this segment’s growth and performance to 2014. Additionally, our “10 to Watch” section includes some up and coming players in this segment and the disruptive forces they embody, as well as some more established companies that are worth watching because of how they are diversifying or adapting to the market. This report provides advice and essential actions for publishers and information providers that want to create revenue opportunities, attract new buyers, and achieve competitive advantage. Equally, it supports those who cover and need greater understanding of the Education & Training segment, including suppliers to the industry, investment bankers and analysts, and journalists.

Highlights:

• Education is a market that has finally begun an inevitable move toward a digital environment
• Outsell’s Education & Training: 2010 Final Market and Share Report revealed that the proportion of revenues derived from digital content continued on an upward trajectory from 28.0% in 2009 to 36.2% in 2010



• Pearson was the first company to have moved past the 50% tipping point, while only one member of the top 10, PRISA, had digital revenues representing less than 10% of the total.
• 2011 will bring further developments along this scale as usage of tablet platforms and mobile devices increases
• The market continues to face a range of disruptive factors from new technology platforms, evolving business models, and pressure from open educational resources.
• Education markets have traditionally been slow to change, but this pace of change has started to accelerate and will continue to do so over the short term as digital services start to fulfill their promises of delivering more effective learning tools at a lower price point.

Purchase this report from the Outsell store.

Press Inquiries: Greg Jordan, Media Relations (650-394-6522, pr@outsellinc.com)

Tags E & T, Education, Education & Training, Market Forecast, Pearson, Trends

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At our eighth annual Signature Event conference, we unveiled a first-of-its-kind iPad app, developed exclusively for our OLC members. The app will eventually be made available to additional clients.

The app is unique because it is the first of its kind to deliver a unique combination of features designed exclusively for information industry executives: peer-to-peer decision support, access to premium research reports, analysis of information industry news, and interaction with Outsell’s analysts.

“We work closely with our cliens and understand their needs. This app addresses two of the things we were seeing. First, we noticed that our OLC clients were using iPads and were always on the go. And secondly, we heard our clients asking for a way to continue the peer-to-peer conversations they were having at OLC meetings. In an ongoing effort to provide extraordinary value we developed this app so that our clients can take Outsell and their valuable peer network with them wherever they go,” said Outsell’s Co-founder and CEO, Anthea Stratigos.

Features include:
• Member access to peers for decision support, including bios and pictures of fellow council members
• Unabridged access to Research Reports, CEO Topics and Insights
• An experience catered to the iPad, featuring a feed of Outsell’s Headlines on the homepage
• Direct access to Outsell’s senior analysts

The app was released to OLC members and will soon be available to the other CEOs Outsell serves. It has been made available for download from Apple iTunes and operates on the iPad.

Tags iPad

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Author: Elizabeth Mason (LinkedIn)

Audience:

This report examines the current competitive positioning of the leaders and identifies potential disruptions to their stronghold. It highlights budding yet real threats to incumbents such as Morningstar’s purchase of Realpoint to grow its established brand name into the new issuance debt ratings business. It examines firms vying for investors’ surveillance ratings budgetary dollars, such as CreditSights and Rapid Ratings. It touches on legal and regulatory changes as they relate to shifting sands within this space. This report is relevant to ratings agencies, their investors, their clients and those players look to compete in the credit ratings and credit research arena.

Highlights:

• This is a follow-up to The Credit & Financial Information Landscape published February 2011, which lays out the hierarchy and subsegments of the Credit & Financial Information segment.
• Here we are providing a deeper analysis of the credit rating agencies subsegment.
• The Big Three: Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s Ratings and Fitch Ratings have long led this shifting sub-segment.
• Many stakeholders question both the overall value of credit ratings and the ethics of the current predominant investor-pay model. Global regulatory reform is compounding change.
• Consequently, new entrants, long kept out by high barriers to entry, are arriving and participating in the reshaping of this arena.

Purchase this report from the Outsell store.

Press Inquiries: Emily Pilk (434-391-3880, epilk@outsellinc.com)
Questions: Scott Templeman (Twitter, stempleman@outsellinc.com)

Tags Analysis, Credit Information, Credit Rating Agencies, Financial Information, Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Investors Service, Ranking, Report, Standard & Poor’s Ratings

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We have a series of upcoming webinars and accompanying papers to help business leaders address today’s most pressing content challenges. Both the papers and the webinars are free of charge!

Content Strategies for One-Click Publishing to the iPad.

For content managers and learning professionals who are responsible for delivering eLearning and performance support applications on mobile devices. Attend the webinar October 25, 10AM EST. Paper coming soon!

Flexible eCommerce for Publishers: Are Your Business Systems Obstacles or Enablers?

For organizations who need robust, contemporary back-end systems to manage content transactions. Attend the webinar October 27, 11AM EST. Download the paper.

Getting to the Core: WEM, CXM, CEM, CMS, WCM . . . What Does it All Mean for You and Your Organization?

This complimentary webinar will take us back to the core and demystify the “marketing-driven” acronyms that have flooded the market in recent industry reports, articles and papers. Scott Liewehr (Lead Analyst Web Content Management) will also measure up the differences and help relate them back to you and your organization’s digital marketing strategy. Attend the webinar November 1, 12PM EST.

The Virtuous Circle of Content, Audience and Targeted Messaging.

For digital marketers and content managers who support web marketing. Learn how to align targeted content with the buyer’s journey. Attend the webinar November 3, 11AM EST. Download the paper.

Download our latest white papers and Beacon publications.

Tags CEM, CMS, Content Management, Content Technology, ECM, Engagement, Publishing, WCM, Web Content, Webinars, White Papers

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Author: Ned May (Twitter, LinkedIn)
Audience: Content aggregators occupy the classic position of a middle-man. In short, they make it easier for end-users to locate and consume information they need and in doing so, they take a cut of the transaction. This means providers in this space face a relentless push to generate greater efficiencies; therefore, they are always adopting new technologies and business models. Often, the winners in this category do disproportionately well while the losers disappear quickly. Such was the case when the original licensed content aggregators first came on the scene and such remains the case in web search, where Google continues to occupy a place of its own. In short, it is a market that in aggregate capitalizes on change, and with that change comes upheaval. This report examines those aggregators focused on providing business intelligence and lays the framework for understanding which aggregators are likely to succeed in the coming years and how they will do it.

Highlights:

• There are three core stages where an aggregator engages with an end-user and extracts value from the process of consuming content: Discovery, Distribution, and Clearance.



• The lines between the subsegments of aggregators are beginning to blur as the market continues to evolve.

• In depth analysis of the current state of each segment as well as trends to watch for in the future.

• Recommended actions for aggregators to best thrive in today’s business intelligence market.

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Purchase this report from the Outsell store.

Press Inquiries:Emily Pilk (434-391-3880, epilk@outsellinc.com)
Questions: Scott Templeman (Twitter, stempleman@outsellinc.com)

Tags Aggregation, Business Information, Information Industry, Information Providers, Information Purchasing

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