Robin Blandford [ ByteSurgery.com ]

10/10/07 The Irish Times - Living Archive Ads

LONDON, UK - I was suitably impressed the new ‘Irish Times Digital Archive Search’ (via Jaiku) knew who I was and offered me free scans of the headlines of the stories I appeared in. Sadly the actual PDF of the paper was held behind a premium content pay-per-month subscription.

How long will it take for an institution like The Irish Times to realise they would make me buy far more daily copies if I got hooked on the archives for free? Not only that, imagine the leverage possible if the adverts in the archive (embedded in the actual pdf scans) were living clickable ads. So I don’t see an ad from 1938 or 1997, rather I see the latest ad from that company who originally had bought the ad-space, or better something related to my archive search keywords.

Now there’s a new model.

@theirishtimes - good service, but you’ll get no subscription payment from me.

-Robin-

Tags: archive, digital, media, newspaper, robin blandford, search, the irish times

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