ContentBiz2005: How to Frame the Conference?

Dorian Benkoil.

Rafat and I talked before this conference about how we might approach it, and came up with a legitimate question: In today’s media environment, when there’s so much consternation over how there’s now (finally?) more demand than supply of quality ad inventory, are sites right to continue to charge subscription fees, limiting audience to those willing to pay for entry, limiting search engine traffic? Does subscription revenue make up for the loss of serving less inventory? If you can charge much higher CPMs for a subscription site (Variety.com, for example, lists rates of $35 for homepage placement vs. other sites charging as little as $5-10 for similar positioning), is it really worth pulling down the subscription wall? (See today’s bit on LA Times making CalendarLive free again.)

And with Wall Street Journal’s purchase of the free Marketwatch.com, experimenting with free content daily, and reaching out to bloggers, do even they agree it might be time to lift the subscription wall?

No, according to Jennifer Singer, who’s giving the first presentation today on WSJ.com, in remarks to me at the morning breakfast. And, sure enough, Anne Holland, who runs Marketing Sherpaand organized this conference, the 5th annual and 5th sellout, hit on that in her opening remarks. More soon.

The coverage is sponsored by Click&Buy.

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