AOP Online Publishing Conference

4pm update: The rise of the "amateur professional" and how "control" is an illusion for Big Media

Earlier: GMG chief exec Carolyn McCall announced that The Guardian is to launch an online video service - featuring originally made content - and Zach Leonard says that the Times is now a "broadcast publisher".

Scroill down for updates

The fifth annual AOP Online Publishing Conference and Awards starring, among others, Zach Leonard, digital media publisher at Times Media and Guardian Media Group chief executive Carolyn McCall.

9.30am: The conference is running late. Outgoing chairman Bill Murray, a managing director at Haymarket Publishing, is saying a few words, handing over the chairmanship for the next two years to Simon Waldman, group director of digital strategy and development at, yes, us again, the Guardian.

10.30am: The Guardian is to launch an online video service - featuring originally made content, GMG chief executive Carolyn McCall announced at the AOP today.

She said the online video offering would feature footage and features produced by GMG's production company Guardian Films.

"For the Guardian it is not just about taking video content From Reuters and using AP but in developing high quality digital content in our own right"

The announcement fits into McCall's theme about how, for newspapers, old 'friends' like the BBC are now also competitors, how the digital revolution means the Guardian has set its sights on becoming the "leading liberal voice" globally and why in the future brand trust is king.

She opens talking about the "seismic shift" that digital has brought, and why will bring, to media businesses. For national newspapers that means that previous media owners that may have been partners - such as the BBC, Channel 4, Sky, and ITV - are now also competitors.

This means relationships are complex. For example, Google is a "vital gateway to our content" and provides revenues from contextual advertising, but they can "turn their guns on anyone of us or all of us (media companies in general) at anytime"

Monster wants recruitment advertising, what is Craigslist up to and eBay recently changed its auction model to compete against Guardian's Trader Media operation.

But there is also opportunity.

Digital has opened geographic boundaries and for the Guardian that means the opportunity of developing into the "leading liberal voice" globally.

This, she argues, is something the Guardian couldn't have considered five years ago but is an achieveable "creative and commercial" goal. Clear values can attract like minds on a mass scale.

It is important to bear in mind that everyone is a potential competitor - from obvious big players to the next big thing we just haven't heard of yet.

For example, she mentions how while in the US recently the Washingtonpost was complaining about how its digital strategy had a spanner thrown in the works by the launch of new players like Digg.

For established businesses - not pureplays - traditional revenues still drive media organisations. This means that the old school thinking has often been that the internet was "optional". But this is a fallacy and no one, no matter how established, "has a divine right to succeed". Assumptions of growth of revenues - display, classifieds - cannot be taken for granted. But digital revenue is not enough to compensate yet.

This means that businesses "can't be scared to make mistakes". And the temptation to "take out" costs have to be weighed carefully.

That means making investments may not seem financially obvious but must be made strategically with an eye on the future.

Convergence means that in the future it won't be so much the medium that matters it is the brand.

Failure to invest and get involved now will mean it is much more expensive, or even impossible, later.

10.45am: Next up is Rod Henwood, head of business at Channel 4, speaking about the broadcaster's most important digital project this year; Zach Leonard, digital media publisher at Times Media, commenting on how it is thinking more as a "broadcast publisher" and why subscription charging is unlikely to work; and Tim Weller, chief executive of Incisive Media on how journalists who hold out for weekly print publication of their stories are living in the dark ages.

Henwood steps up first and sums up what all three echo when he says "I could just say ditto to Carolyn's speech."

Still, Channel 4 of course has its own problems and Henwood admits that its "business model is under threat."

Just one example is the fact that Sky's basic package offers around 600 channels - 4 years ago that number was "just" 200.

Convergence for Channel 4 means that the "single most important priority this year is the launch of our video-on-demand" service.

He fields a question about how "old media" companies aren't innovators - young new media companies are.

He counters that many of these companies have fallen by the wayside. And some 'successful' ones don't actually make money.

"The trick is to catch up with the pioneers and convert that into profit." For old media companies it is a "journey" about "morphing, not abandoning, the precepts of the old business."

Zach Leonard is up next.

Tapping in to what Carolyn said earlier about developing the Guardian's video capability, Leonard argues that the Times needs to think of itself as a "broadcast publisher" - look at the development of Times TV - and that the integration of newsrooms is "just the beginning".

He also argues that "technology is as critical as journalists going forward."

The Times is "going where the money is and where it might be moving" in forming its digital strategy. This means user-generated content is seeing big investment.

Another critical areas is how to cross-platform monetise classifieds - again he points to the success of the Guardian - which is nice - with the Auto Trader product "dealer desktop".

Someone throws in a question about the dramatic changes and upheaval at The Telegraph.

His view: "they are addressing an important challenge....probably to their credit" and there has been "too much emphasis in the media".

Leonard, an ex-FT suit, is not a fan, in general, of the subscription model charging for content. At least not for general news when it can be found everywhere. The Times is pursuing the advertising revenue stream

Charging could be pursued for legacy content - for example Virginia Woolf book reviews from the 1920s - that appeal to discreet groups.

Incisive Media's Tim Weller is a man who "didn't know what a blog was 3 years ago" and now 14% of the company's revenue comes from online.

The secret for business-to-business publishers, and probably all publishers in reality, is content has to be "must have and real time". Journalists who "hug" stories and wait for it to be printed in the magazine.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is a cultural one. Trade publications need to be more discursive and analytical.

The future is about proprietary data and information that can be sold on its own or "wrapped" into existing print products or be made the "centre piece of web sites".

12.30pm: This one's on that old chestnut the future of advertising.

Users can control their own media world. How can digital media owners offer a proposition that is unique and compelling and advertisers capitalise on new channels?

The panel consists of: William Higham, founder, Next Big Thing; Matt Champion, business development director, Media.com; Robert Brighouse, managing director, Reed Business Information; and Annelies van den Belt, new media director, Telegraph Group.

The challenge for the advertising industry, says Champion, is that agencies now have to be experts at everything in the new multi-platform age.

Champion argues that broadband is allowing more innovative experiences and campaigns but there is under-resourcing in staff and skills in the digital agency world.

Furthermore, the way agencies are set up - TV, online and mobile departments - are all colliding and this makes seamless delivery of campaigns tricky.

It begs the question on the shape of the agency in the future.

For publishers, Annelies says that there is now a whole new way of trading, dealing with advertisers and their needs.

Not much new being said here.

The consumer view, from Higham, talks about media fragmentation, avoiding ads. There is the idea of "choice fatigue", huge numbers of products.

The reason people go to Google is because people don't trust adverts. Commercials and marketing need to be more trustworthy, apparently.

More demand on publishers to be relevant in this climate is the Telegraph view. In the business-to-business space, Brighouse argues that advertisers haven't appreciated the complexity of the readership/audience.

How does advertising have to change - we have seen the rise and fall of pop-ups for examples, asks moderator Philip Smith, head of content at Brand Republic.

Champion argues we have spent years getting rid of interruptive and moving to engagement. Brand campaigns are not bad for engagement in this context.

Back to consumer insight guy. More fragmentation talk. Silver surfers. Average gamers age is 31, not spotty teens. Well, maybe.

He talks, more interestingly, of needing to "hunt the consumer down". The idea of in-game advertising, space in Second Life. YouTube.

He raises an interesting publishing model of a newspaper that publishes hard copy on the weekend and only digitally during the week. The idea that it caters to time-starved consumers delivering content in a relevant way to them.

In Q&A time the panel is asked about how swiftly advertisers are embracing convergence. Are the complexities hampering rapid growth and the creative approach?

For the Telegraph it is about a cultural change. Traditional companies have to be must more receptive to change.

Lets wrap this one up for lunch.

2.45pm: How can media companies capitalize on opportunities offered by the social web - the likes of blogs and social networking sites.

Speakers in this panel session are: Lloyd Shepherd, director of news, sport and information at Yahoo Europe! who mentions the day the media giant accidentally deleted an entire web chat forum with Al Gore; Tom Bureau, MD at interactive publisher CNET Networks UK on why you need to avoid the "true freaks" when developing a UGC strategy; and Adriana Cronin-Lukas, chief executive of the Big Blog Company, on why control in the new world is a delusion.

First up is Tom. When you think about user content and social environments you need to think about who you serve. In reality, not that many users will contribute - YouTube, despite its massive size, has found this. But those that do can be key to building the scale and value.

We aren't trying to cover off everyone like a Yahoo! or MSN, says Tom, equally, we aren't trying to tap into the "true freaks" who are never satisfied and might burn you with their user-generated content contribution.

The target, for CNET at least, is "avid contributors" and that in turn will draw "smart consumers", those wanting wider information about all sorts of things such as films and shopping, or quality viewpoints, for example.

Some of the social networks haven't had what Tom describes is a "centre of gravity" - social environments can wither. Look at the rise and fall of Friendster.

The key: "highest value" users must be identified, promoted and rewarded to in turn draw in wider users.

Adriana of The Big Blog Company is up next.

Apparently at the nub it is not technology so much but online dynamics having an impact in the business and media industry.

Consumers can create and distribute their own content. Control is a delusion. Control is not just skipping ads, it is about content when individual want it.

We have a convoluted analogy here about the internet as the "sea" and other media channels "floating" in it and being "punctured" a little bit, or something, and there are some "pipelines". Hmmm.

This is interesting: There is a rise of "amateur professionals" - people with media skills going into the social space - becoming more prevalent and keeping content standards high.

The business model? You need to think laterally about what businesses are in the business of. For example: Google sells reach, Amazon sells reviews and eBay sells reputation.

Successful media companies are those providing tools and spaces where consumers can do new things. If those places become gatekeepers - and she says MySpace may be in danger of going down this path - they will fail.

Yahoo! Europe's Lloyd Shepherd is here to chat next.

Social media is, perhaps, "just people doing stuff". There is a lot going on, and Yahoo!'s services are huge - delicious, Flickr - but people want simplicity as well.

The idea Yahoo! is driving at is to try and combine "us" with "them".

In keeping and drawing attention he relates how years ago they talked about the idea of "campfires" online that can aggregate consumers in areas of interest.

Apparently the Google Video guy won the crowd over showing exciting clips at a presentation the other week. Cue quick clip of Shakira's "hips don't lie" with user generated dancing scenes. That woke the crowd up.

A question on social media from the floor: an argument that the UK is behind the curve adopting social media and how will it spot trends better going forward?

Lloyd from Yahoo! reluctantly fields this. Who can tell? He quips "more search."

Adriana leaps in and talks about more search but in terms of filtering - blogs, wiki etc that we see in publishing will combine in some way with filtering and search.

Tom thinks social media has a lot of legs in it, however, people will realize a lot of what is out there is rubbish and branded content - a theme from earlier today - will come more to the fore.

To round it off the moderator, our own Simon Waldman, asks about digital disaster stories.

The pick of the bunch is from Lloyd: Al Gore was online at a major Yahoo! chat with massive responses to what you can you do to save the world. The Yahoo! team in the Philippines, not knowing who he was, deleted the whole thing thinking it was spam. Ouch.

4.15pm: The final session of the day takes a look at some case studies on how to engage with the hard-to-reach youth audience who want everything tailored and personalized to them.

Speakers are Charlie Redmayne, MD of MyKindaPlace.com, who reveals that the now Sky-owned teen site will be developing into more of a "MySpace-style" social networking destination; Ben Perreau, editor of NME.com; and Claire Harcup, commissioning executive at Culture Online.

Ben is up first. Youth are scary. They have cash and they set trends - what they do today everyone does tomorrow. They are important. Is the answer to build another social network?

Young people want simple and useful information - all the bells and whistles web site functionality may not resonate.

The redesign of NME.com needed to take into account these sorts of things.

Hang on, this is now just all about the wonders of NME. Nice site, but not really blog-worthy content. You had to be there, as they say.

Integration, partnerships, media players, p2p, "tribes" of users, customizable news, blogs, user-generated news stories. You get the picture.

Charlie, who recently sold up MyKindaPlace.com to Sky, starts out by making a quip about how his mum got excited because she heard that when MySpace sold up they were worth $580m. Laughs all-round.

Massive decline in consumption of traditional media by teens. When he launched the site teen girl magazines were huge. Not now.

Reason is competition. Lots more channels, lots of teen content, but they are watching so much less now. TV is for older people. Magazines are becoming less relevant.

The winners are mobile phones and online. The "tipping point" seems to be 10 years old for mobile ownership. 91% of 12 year olds own them for gods sake!

Online is similarly ridiculously populated by teens. They go online for information - content is the next big thing by the way. Social networking is huge, sure, but it will come back and quality content will be required.

Instant messenger and social networking are also huge online activities.

Now to MyKindaPlace.com (girls site) and MonkeySlum (for boys).

Redmayne reveals that the websites, now under the Sky umbrella, are looking to develop social networking functionality "like MySpace".

It seems an obvious move, however, I certainly haven't heard them talk about such large-scale plans before openly. In fact, quite the opposite. I just found a story online written at the time of the Sky deal where the satellite operator said it didn't intend to develop a MySpace-style operation around them.

Well, it certainly sounds like that is the plan here.

Right now the sites have blogs and comments which are successful but not huge.

He admits that they are "not in the same league as Bebo and MySpace" and that they "need to develop faster". User generated content is also going to be ramped up majorly.

When questioned on the Sky ownership he says that the broadcaster, like most of the others, didn't get involved in new media as much as they could have early on. Sky will use the acquisition to drive reach and relationships as broadly as possible.

Claire is next. It is again very heavy on the case study angle so we might leave this one here.

That is it from the conference today. The awards are on from 7pm tonight so tune into MediaGuardian.co.uk tomorrow morning to check out the winners.