The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of a model based on advertising » Nieman Journalism Lab

Excerpt from an extensive interview with "Economist deputy editor Tom Standage, who oversees the magazine’s digital efforts"

"STANDAGE: The Economist has taken the view that advertising is nice, and we’ll certainly take money where we can get it, but we’re pretty much expecting it to go away.
So we’re switching toward what we call thought leadership, which is we sell sponsorship of conferences, with white papers, with online advertising as well. But essentially it’s not straightforward display advertising. It allows advertisers to associate themselves with particular topic areas, or raise their profiles in particular areas. And it’s not native advertising either, because the crucial thing for me is that we’re not serving this out of our editorial CMS. For me, that’s the line that we won’t cross. When the ads are coming out of the same CMS as the editorial, which is one definition of native advertising — we won’t do that."

The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of a model based on advertising » Nieman Journalism Lab