The NAA's publication called PressTime has written a rather interesting article about digital newsprint technologies that are allowing user to receive a digital version of the newspaper and then take this eCopy with them wherever they are and consume this content across a whole host of digital devices. My take on all of these new advancements is that these emergent technologies will all come to play some role in a consumers buying process of first going online research a product before heading into a physical store to make a purchase.
Advertisers need to take note and embrace these technologies as soon as possible, even if they just "test" them out. It is important to get a understand of each and determine how to best leverage them to meet their business goals. The only way to do so is to get your hands dirty and just try things out. I am not talking major ad spends, but small defined tests to learn about the technologies and to gain expertise and position yourself as a thought leader, so that when these technologies do reach the mainstream, your firm has a head start on the rest of the competition. To read the entire article, click here.
For this blog post, I would like to focus in on one of of these technologies that I find especially interesting. Introducing the Times Reader, available in a free beta on NYTimes.com. The Times Reader is a downloadable application that enhances the onscreen reading experience of The New York Times for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista users. It offers consumers access to The Times electronically, online or offline from a desktop, laptop, tablet PC or ultra-mobile computing device. Times Reader lets users retrieve the latest news and photos, through a synching process that lasts approximately one minute.
This new reader technology combines the interactivity and immediacy of the Web with the portability of a newspaper through Windows Presentation Foundation (which is Microsoft's advanced display technology that is avaialble only in Windows Vista). The text in Times Reader is displayed in a format to fit the size and layout of any computer screen and enables readers to customize the display according to personal preferences.
The NYTimes.com is the first to offer advertisers and readers this unique and advanced capability to date. It really gives the users of this technology and content the ability to experience the phyically printed paper in a new electronic way and provides advertisers greater visibility for their ads through this unique platform.
For advertisers, the application provides another creative platform to reach readers. Advertisements can be as small as a button or expand into multi-columns. In the beta version of Times Reader, only one advertisement appears on each page, giving significant visibility to that ad space. Future iterations of Times Reader may accommodate more advertisements on a single page. Furthermore, once downloaded, the content on the userseIU PC allows readers to click through advertisements to a designated landing page from that advertiser, even when not connected to the Web.
Anyone who is currently running Windows XP and is a registered user of NYTimes.com can participate in the Times Reader beta by signing up on http://www.nytimes.com/timesreader. Times Reader is free during the beta period. It will officially launch in 2007.
To learn more about this cool new online service/product, click here.
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