Publishers Grope for New Revenue Models

In the analog dollars to digital dimes era, publishers desperately need new revenue streams. Two relative newcomers — content marketing and ecommerce  — are in vogue as a way for publishers to expand their businesses.

Forbes has pinned its hopes on distributing sponsors’ content. It’s called AdVoice, and it sits online (and in some cases, in print) alongside Forbes original reporting, though clearly marked as an ad. One of its clients, SAP, sees AdVoice more as a branding tool for itself than a direct ROI mechanism.  According to AdAge, however, AdVoice is having minimal impact on the publisher’s revenue. The problem here, though, is that Forbes is trying to sell on nostalgia, setting prices at pre-Internet magazine-dominance levels. With no such thing as scarcity on the Web, Forbes will have to rethink its pricing. It can take some cues from new-style publishers like the Huffington Post, which the WSJ reported last week is banking on content marketing as a major plank of its business.