Credit: Gina Argentina

Considering how the New York Times is coping with the the plight of the publishing industry and news media better than most, it’s not surprising to see that they might be pursuing a more symbiotic editorial model. Granted, when it comes to weathering the storm, the NYT is a lot larger in both scope and scale (size, authority, and audience) than many of its contemporaries, so it has a definite edge. But its continual efforts to reinvent its content model are plain.

In addition to everything it’s done with blogs and Times Wire (a real time news feed), it seems to be pursuing all three facets of a symbiotic editorial model. Most recently, not only has it started thinking of its readers as users, but it’s implemented a diversified ad-revenue model to go with it. As Adage reports:

[...] Derek Gottfrid, senior software architect and product technologist at The New York Times, said the company has quit calling online readers “readers,” instead referring to them as users. [...]

“When we think traditionally about creation [at The New York Times] it was limited to people within the Times,” [said Derek Gottfrid, senior software architect and product technologist at NYT]. “We created for readers … [for whom] it was a passive experience. But as we moved online, we wanted to move people from readers to users.”

This shift to users-instead-of-readers is an important part of the transition toward becoming a social news organization. As Alan Rusbridger, the Editor-in-Chief of an equally auhtoritative newspaper, The Guardian, noted in a recent interview, there is a blurring between the reader and the journalist, so it’s become necessary to involve the reader more and create a community around your journalist core.

But more importantly, the NYT’s shift toward users-instead-of-readers is also seen in its integration of apps and what those apps might mean for its revenues. Overall, it looks to be evolving into a veritable social news organization. As the AdAge article elaborates, to coax people from being readers to being users:

[...] the company has opened up its [APIs]. The Times has taken content and data — both internally created material, such as movie reviews and best-seller lists, and external data, such as campaign-finance and legislative information — and opened up the APIs so that outside developers can create tools for its consumers.

Among the results: Instantwatcher mashes up the “Watch Instantly” program from online movie-rental service Netflix with Times movie critics’ top choices. Another app, called NYTExplorer, provides an alternative article-search function to the one that exists on NYTimes.com.

These apps demonstrate how the NYT is diversifying their ad-revenue model. The “Watch Instantly” app, for instance, seems a lot like an affiliate marketing tactic — i.e. a performance-based referral marketing model.

Purusing this kind of ad-revenue diversification and the technology to implement it is 2/3 of the symbiotic editorial equation. The reaming third is integrating a full-sevice marketing agency into your organization (as Vice Magazine has), and as the Nieman Journalism Lab recently documented, the NYT has an advertising R&D lab that seems poised to evolve into just such a full-sevice marketing agency.

Credit: OliverAlex

First, a publication provides two products: content and a medium. The content is for your readers/consumers/users, and the medium is for advertisers looking to reach them.

Your editorial becomes symbiotic when you cross-sell those two products, and you do that by strategically develop content items that complement the offers of advertisers that you proactively scouted. But it’s not about churning out biased content that will help advertisers sell their products. Rather, it’s about having an editorial format, knowing your readers demographics, and understanding what kind of consumers they also happen to be. So a big part of it is making sure that your advertisers actually have product offers that appeal to your readers’ consumer interests.

This, of course, raises the question of how you figure that out. It’s one thing to replace your ad-sales department with a fully integrated marketing agency, like Vice Magazine does, but it’s quite another to analyze your readers in a non-intrusive, non-obstructive way. And that’s where understanding them as users comes in.

Credit: Alex Glickman

But then there’s the technology side to treating your readers as users. Basically, if you’re going to provider your readers with the content that they each find most relevant, you’re going to have to collect data on them. And you do that by becoming a social news organization (or just plain-ol’ social content organization).

By leveraging popular APIs so that your readers can seamlessly aggregate, syndicate, and share your content, you achieve so much more than just increasing page views. You also gain insight into their behavior as users and consumers. Integrated with personal profiles/logins within your portal, this allows you target them with the most relevant content.

More importantly, it allows you to target them with offers that actually appeal to them. And when you do that, you not only increase conversions and value of your ad-space; you also build trust with your readers by demonstrating that you understand and appreciate their interests (as consumers and users). In a word, you use your users to target advertisers.

Of course, doing so effectively require that you (1) have a fully integrated marketing agency in-house (like Vice Magazine) that can (2) help you understand your users, (3) collaborate with your editorial to develop symbiotic content, (4) scout appropriate advertisers, and (5) diversify your ad-revenue stream so that you’re not relying on a single, limited model that might coax you into compromising user-experience. In other words, your in-house marketing agency has to market your editorial product first, and your advertisers second.

Something that digital marketers are having to address more and more is mobile marketing. And it’s more than just SMS ads. It’s also location-based service, near fields communication, and the mobile web.

This is why 2 of Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web made the cut for their activities in the mobile marketplace. While Steve Jobs ranked #10 for turning “his attention to the wireless world, challenging entrenched players like Motorola and Research In Motion with the iPhone,” Nokia’s VP, Marketing, Anssi Vanjoki ranked #22 for being “responsible for convincing consumers as well as business partners that Nokia’s devices are useful for much more than talking and occasionally snapping a photo,” as well as the front man of a company that’s “directly taking on Apple, Google, and Research in Motion.”

For digital marketers, the lesson is that we have to start thinking about the mobile web (and its users) because it’s well on its way to rivaling the desktop/laptop web. Of course, when a medium is this new, understanding its users and their habitat can be a challenge.

Fortunately, mobile industry leaders like Ericsson Inc. have people like Pankaj Asundi, VP of Multimedia and Content, sharing their insight and experience with the rest of us. At the 2008 CTIA show, Pankaj presented his view on consumer segmentation models for mobile, and writing for the Canadian Marketing Blog, mobile marketer Phil Barret posted on the 8 Different Mobile Consumer Segments.

By comparing these different mobile consumer segments against our target demographics, we can understand how to engage our users and customers as they wade into the mobile web. Here is Pankaj’s break down as presented by Phil:

1. Careerist – The believe that to say ahead of the game you need the best tools. They are 25-39 years old. Their bills are paid for by company. They have limited free time and mobile is key part of day to day life. Knowledge is power… and time is money!
2. Experiencers – They are all about new experiences, possessions, technologies etc… They are early adopters.
3. Pioneer Youth – I want it all from my mobile… and now. Second best is not good enough. Always texting. 15-24 years old.
4. Mainstream Youth – They want the latest gadget so that they can belong. They aren’t necessarily technical experts. 15-24.
5. Mainstream Materialists – Gadgets and mobile are fashion accessories – anything that will make them look good. 25-29 years old. They live for today and not tomorrow. Use more for show than communication.
6. Basic phoners – They use their mobile to call only. Many have mobile phones as emergency backups. They likely don’t know how to text message. 40+ years old.
7. Family phoners – need good reason to adopt new technology. They are happy with what they’ve got and they mostly use their mobile device to stay in touch with family.
8. In touch organizers – my mobile keeps me connected. 30-64 years old. These are parents who juggle busy professional and social lives, organizing their family, friends, and local community. Average tech users – competent but not experts.

Exactly how the mobile web is going to shape-up, I don’t know. But one thing is for sure; it’s not going to be as straight-forward as the current web. Rather, it’s going to require that we reach out to users not only to where they are, but based on where they are.

After all, mobile targeting is precisely the kind of user-specific relevancy that companies like Google have tried to provide through personalized search: it’s based on location, history, and even your surroundings. It’s important, then, that we start considering how these factors are going to change the way we do business — that is, both the opportunities it will present, and the challenges it will pose as some of our most time-tested methods are rendered obsolete.

As I write this, I am at Affiliate Summit 2009 where everyone’s talking about making money online. It’s different than other Geek Conferences that way: less BS evangelizing about Web 2.0 and more of the bottom line.

And that got me thinking about this interview I did a while back. It’s with some who has one of the coolest job titles ever. His name is Avinash Kaushik, and he’s the Analytics Evangelist for Google. It’s his job to help the world understand how to use analytics to make websites that convert better — i.e. sell more.