[...] industry-owned advertising groups, single web-subscriptions across multiple publications…seemingly anything plausible and [...]

[...] to users behavior (the need to register or to provide other forms of demographic information) and privacy concerns. A number of commentators discussing the ViewPass or CircLabs plan have agreed with the notion that [...]

[...] companies like Journalism Online and ViewPass are creating e-commerce technology to help newspapers charge readers for stories while gathering [...]

[...] Alan Mutter’s plan for newspapers is an industry-owned ad venture » Nieman Journalism Lab "Mutter and his business partner, Ridgely Evers, are pitching a targeted-advertising and e-commerce system that, in an intriguing twist, would be owned by the newspaper industry. They are, essentially, seeking venture capital from publishers “who would gain a permanent, preferred share in the future profits,” according to a two-page document distributed at the Chicago meeting. We obtained that briefing and called up Mutter to see what it was all about." (tags: newspapers advertising future journalism) Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]

Good point, SteveZ. The histories of New Century Networks and Career Builder cast some doubt on the industry’s ability to collaborate.

Alan, though I’m not familiar with the intricacies of targeted advertising, it sounds like you are, and that’s a reasonable critique. My boss Josh found an interesting study that suggests, if I’m reading it right, that targeting is much effective in the context of search than in tracking reader behavior. Sometimes a holy grail is just a cup.

And, Zac, thanks for that explanation. It’s a good case, and I’ll see if I can get Mutter and/or Evers to respond. —Zach

There’s a lot of data mining that can be done once you have user data (Though I’m skeptical many newspaper companies have the chops in mathematics to understand machine learning, natural language processing, semantics, association rule mining, etc.), but my broader point is more that there is absolutely zero reason to create a new registration platform. A single-sign on or a federated login process would be better while Mutter should focus on the core technology.

And you can mine plenty (location, contextual relation to the content on the page, social meta data related to that page, etc.) without even needing registration. It’s not that complicated at all.

But none of this yet answer the question of why a user would be willing to give up privacy? What are they getting of value in exchange here?

Alan Zell is right, though I do think there’s lots of value in contextual/behavioral/socially-targeted advertising. Advertisers haven’t really seen the value in it yet. What good is a high CPM with nobody willing to pay the high CPM?

Which brings me back to the math. I don’t think newspapers are going to be at the forefront of semantics and machine learning any time soon.

Sure, the chances are slim for making sales via “buckshot marketing” but if one does not put the buckshot into the air, how will one hit the moving target? It’s a case of “today I have no interest . . . tomorrow I may or I’ve learned other do.

It’s not unlike reading any print publication. No one reads all the articles or adv. However, if something in the headline or beginning of an article or a word/term used in an adv meets what the reader/viewer has been thinking/talking about, they read it.

What any publisher — on or off line — or writers and advertisers need to take into consideration is that they cannot expect what they publish or advertisers adv to do what they cannot possibly do.

[...] focus of the meeting kept us from learning until a week later about Alan Mutter’s interesting presentation about ViewPass, a plan for a system that would allow easy payment by consumers across multiple [...]

The particular advantage is that when combined with local distribution of paper advertising can move to enabling commerce instead of selling views. I would think that the prices a newspaper could charge for enabling trackable transactions might give them a huge pricing advantage. If an ad can be put into the cost of sales column it’s a game changer.

One piece of tech I wanted to get on people’s radar is information rich QR codes. While still a sleeper, as the US gets up to speed on wireless broad band it’s a very neat way to collect information about reader’s behavior when they click their cell phone.

Given that it will probably take a year to get this off the ground, it might be useful to put that into the plan.

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Zac, presumably the registration would be used to collect data that can’t be gleaned from reading habits, but your skepticism seems well-placed since readers have shown a clear disdain for registration of any sort on news sites.

And, Ridgely, thanks for the clarification and link. —Zach

One point of clarification: ViewPass isn’t intended to replace or compete with the ad networks, but rather to provide them with enhanced (anonymous) data about each viewer.

This will enable the Yahoos and Doubleclicks of the world to deliver better-targeted ads, resulting in better ad performance, and consequently delivering higher CPMs.

That’s why we don’t consider Yahoo to be a competitor.

See Alan’s post for more details: http://newsosaur.blogspot.com