Emap chief: distinctive content is needed if you’re charging for it

Online publishers need to have “sustainable distinctive content” if they want to charge for access, Emap CEO David Gilbertson told an AOP Summit yesterday.

Speaking about the difficulties of charging for content, he said that “if everyone has near unlimited audience quantity then to survive we have to have audience quality – so we have to find sustainable distinctive content”.

“A commodity with unlimited supply has a price of nil. The price is determined by the lowest cost provider,” he added.

He contrasted the current situation, where consumers have “open access” to the content they want, with what has gone before, where “media businesses have been offering to clients targeted consumers in an atmosphere of engagement”.

Business to business publishers, like Emap, are well placed to benefit from charging for content on the web, said Gilbertson, as although its customer base is small in particular cases, “it knows them intimately”.

However, he said that the challenge facing B2B businesses is “control of the access channel”.