scary interesting article here from e-consultancy which struck me cause i like the title …the pain of free. basically google are launching a free mobile navigation system based on their Maps data, which you can easily see will kill Garmin and TomTom and other’s businesses. good luck with that, Garmin!
the Guardian ran a great article yesterday on advertising revenues for online newspapers, and how that’s actually a bigger problem than circulation declines. too true. basically revenues for advertising on newspaper websites are declining (in some cases faster than revenues in the print version) for the basic reason there is no scarcity in online audiences. if you want to target ABC1s, mums, or teenagers you can do this easily on the net, and as the number of sites and pages on t’internet swell, it gets easier and easier. and with the excess of supply, the cost of advertising goes down … so the sums for ad-supported news content just doesn’t seem to work …
