At the end of March, BtoB’s Media Business channel ran a profile of a new analytics product, Demand Map.
A “software as a service” offering from Scout Analytics, Demand Map is described as a “predictive pricing” model that calculates how much customers should be charged online. A company executive likens the product to Google Analytics, which provides users with data-driven views of website activity.
Although the article focused (naturally) on business-to-business applications, it’s not hard to see how consumer magazine and trade book publishers could adapt the software to analyze demand for digital content. This skill set will become even more important for publishers looking to grow their share of direct sales.
Underscoring the trend is a Publishing Perspectives post, “The Importance of APIs”, contributed by the CEO of Mashery. He calls on publishers to “focus on optimizing channels of discovery and distribution, by leveraging broadly applicable standards and a vast network of knowledgeable, skilled developers”.
As demand for content becomes both more diffuse and user-determined, creating content for a fixed set of formats will become expensive and probably unsupportable. For a variety of publishers, migrating to a more open approach may be a lifeline strategy.
