Content Ascending

The few blog posts in this space over the past couple of weeks have been mostly concerned with the Huffington Post/Aol deal (here and here) and the debut of new subscription models for publishers courtesy of iPad and Google’s One Pass (here). There is a common thread to them and it is content.

At other times, posts have been made here spearing content mills, Aol’s included. Demand Media’s IPO in the last few weeks was, nevertheless, another story about content – whether quasi, or not.

Content, and its material importance to the online media business, seems to be ascending. That would be an important sign of progress after the years it has spent living under the roof of technology.

Along these lines Ad Age interviews Michael Wolf, who, with Anil Dash, started Activate, a digital consulting firm which sounds like it is helping media companies save their content from drowning in the torrent of new media technology. They quote Michael at the end, saying:

“Media companies do well when you have competition between platforms. We aren’t sure what platforms are going to work and what consumers will buy. We’ve gone from this free and open web where everything is available back to a point where things are closed. We are now back to a place that works very well for media, and that is scarcity. The idea that somehow a media company could be back in the position that they create scarcity and therefore create value it totally turns on its head the way things have been going until now. This is the moment of revaluing content.”

It is hard to say on the basis of a few paywall models that we’ve gone from open to closed. But it does appear this is the moment of revaluing content. In which case it should lead to alignment with other media platforms making it easier for advertisers to answer the question, “How do I use new media?”

The answer won’t surprise them. Use it the same way consumers use it: for content.

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