Content is the new advertising

Oliver Luft of the Guardian blogged a nice piece today, summarising comments made by Stefano Maruzzi of CondeNet International at the AOP conference yesterday, in London.

Maruzzi, President of the digital arm of CondeNast, spoke of the challenges of attuning an established international company that publishes glossy magazines to the digital world.

The transformation of content sourcing, production and editorial functions into an agile, cross platform, trans title resource is a mammoth challenge indeed, but one which CondeNet are tackling head on in a bid to ensure they connect with the ‘iPod generation’

It is mentioned that close to 50% of their operating costs are focussed on content production.  This is reason enough to necessitate that content delievering the highest value return possible. There are now real opportunities for content owners to work their assets much harder, expanding beyond the realms of their own titles, to essentially use their content as advertising.

There is nothing particularly groundbreaking in the concept of ‘taking the mountain to muhammed’, but the fact is that it’s now easier and cheaper than ever to achieve. The level of inter-connectivity and accessibility to free digital distribution channels means you can now pump out tasty snippets of teaser content to thousands of potential new readers, in the places where they hang out online, very quickly and very cheaply.

The winners in this new world will be the content owners that can efficiently pull these readers back into their own domains and monetise through smart ad funding.