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How much do rich interactive digital articles cost to create versus a print article? That questions also changes the math.

by com2kid 11y ago

kbenson 11y ago
But that's still a single up-front cost that is then amortized across all visits over time, compared to a smaller up-front cost for typesetting plus a per issue cost of actually printing the paper. Unless your rich interactive article costs a lot, it should be cheaper at some point. The question is when.
- com2kid 11y ago
  > But that's still a single up-front cost that is then amortized across all visits over time, To some small extent it amortizes across time, but in reality I imagine the vast majority of benefits come from immediate usage. Interactive maps of data years old aren't that useful, such articles tend to create a lot of buzz when they are released but the benefit quickly fades away. is the increase in sales + ad revenue minus the development + media + online distribution costs higher than the profit from newspaper sales - print costs + ads + distribution costs? Technology isn't always cheaper. It'd be interesting to find out what the breakdown is here.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    > is the increase in sales + ad revenue minus the development + media + online distribution costs higher than the profit from newspaper sales - print costs + ads + distribution costs? If I understand your point, that's specifically not an argument I'm making. I'm not saying online is more lucrative than print, but that the relative cost to profit probably makes it look good, because you don't have to do a media heavy article, you can still do it the same as print (but including relevant external video clips is easy enough at little to no extra effort). At that point the development cost is the same as for physical media, but the delivery cost is close to zero (not really, but so far below operating a printing and delivery pipeline that we can probably agree it's less than 5% of traditional delivery costs). My point is really "web delivery with subscriptions is fairly low cost, but also lower revenue. Any extra revenue we can get from this source will greatly affect the profit margin since a large chunk of the overhead has been removed." From that perspective, it looks really good, even if it's not currently delivering on the same level as their legacy operations.

How much do rich interactive digital articles cost to create versus a print article? That questions also changes the math.

by com2kid 11y ago

How much do rich interactive digital articles cost to create versus a print article? That questions also changes the math.

kbenson 11y ago

But that's still a single up-front cost that is then amortized across all visits over time, compared to a smaller up-front cost for typesetting plus a per issue cost of actually printing the paper. Unless your rich interactive article costs a lot, it should be cheaper at some point. The question is when.

com2kid 11y ago
> But that's still a single up-front cost that is then amortized across all visits over time, To some small extent it amortizes across time, but in reality I imagine the vast majority of benefits come from immediate usage. Interactive maps of data years old aren't that useful, such articles tend to create a lot of buzz when they are released but the benefit quickly fades away. is the increase in sales + ad revenue minus the development + media + online distribution costs higher than the profit from newspaper sales - print costs + ads + distribution costs? Technology isn't always cheaper. It'd be interesting to find out what the breakdown is here.
- kbenson 11y ago
  > is the increase in sales + ad revenue minus the development + media + online distribution costs higher than the profit from newspaper sales - print costs + ads + distribution costs? If I understand your point, that's specifically not an argument I'm making. I'm not saying online is more lucrative than print, but that the relative cost to profit probably makes it look good, because you don't have to do a media heavy article, you can still do it the same as print (but including relevant external video clips is easy enough at little to no extra effort). At that point the development cost is the same as for physical media, but the delivery cost is close to zero (not really, but so far below operating a printing and delivery pipeline that we can probably agree it's less than 5% of traditional delivery costs). My point is really "web delivery with subscriptions is fairly low cost, but also lower revenue. Any extra revenue we can get from this source will greatly affect the profit margin since a large chunk of the overhead has been removed." From that perspective, it looks really good, even if it's not currently delivering on the same level as their legacy operations.