Olive adds text messaging option for news delivery

January 24, 2008

Publications turn the mobile page

Olive Software is turning the chapter on traditional publishing by delivering news and other notifications via the mobile channel.

In partnership with email marketing company Informz, Olive is extending its mobile offerings on the BlackBerry, iPhone and other handheld devices with new text messaging capabilities. Publishers can now reach their readers on the go with breaking news headlines or other notifications.

“Publishers spend a great deal of money on creating, producing and distributing their content [and] as people have shifted their reading time from print to online, the industry has suffered with decreases in circulation and ad revenue,” said Peter Spielvogel, director of product marketing at Olive, Santa Clara, CA.

“As their readers go online, the publishers are looking for new ways to reach them and stay relevant,” he said. “Text messaging is another channel to provide relevant and timely information to people on-the-go. This strengthens the relationship between publisher and reader.”

Olive’s service is powered by its microcontent platform and article-level segmentation, which repurposes articles for display on mobile devices. The new text messaging capabilities allow users to receive notifications from publishers with a link to an electronic edition.

Some publishers charge a separate fee for a mobile subscription

Users can view the full edition or a text-only version, depending on his or her preference or technical constraints such as bandwidth and screen resolution.

Informz also enables users to choose how notifications are received, either via a text message, email notification or both.

For publishers, adopting the solution makes their content available to a global community of nearly 9 million BlackBerry users and 4 million iPhone users.

“Publishers are racing to make their content available to increasingly powerful mobile phones and other handheld devices,” Mr. Spielvogel said.

Device-specific ads
There are many ways to monetize the media once it’s in the mobile channel.

Some publishers charge a separate fee for a mobile subscription, some bundle mobile with a print subscription. Still others make content freely available via mobile in the hope that people will pay to read their content in a different format.

“Ultimately, these two models will merge, and people will have access to current and back issues through their phones,” Mr. Spielvogel said. “Publishers are conducting research to assess what people will pay for this service so they can determine the size of the market.” 

Meanwhile, just as the Web spawned banner ads and interstitials, mobile devices need device-specific ad vehicles.

“So far, most publishers are either keeping the existing print ads or omitting ads in text-only versions,” Mr. Spielvogel said. “But we know they are working on determining ways to balance the need for advertising revenue with being unobtrusive, all within the constraints of a two- or three-inch screen.

“And we have not even touched on location-based services that will combine targeted ads based on the screen content and the user’s GPS-derived position,” he said.

Other notable publishers using Olive’s digital publishing solution include Time Inc., ESPN, Reed Business Information, Hearst Business Media and Newport Communications.

“This is another big step towards the day when people will have access to all the information ever created in the palm of their hand,” Mr. Spielvogel said.