Digital content meets digital marketing

It is challenging to apply modern digital marketing tools and tactics to copyright content with digital rights management (DRM). A good example of this type of content is digital books (more commonly referred to as eBooks). There are more than 3 million eBooks available through various retailers the majority of which are protected by DRM technology. The goal of DRM technology is to prevent unauthorized replication but the added implication is that this content is locked up and therefore insulated from being indexed by search engines (and therefore excluded from search marketing as one example). Most publishers and authors may acknowledge this shortcoming but are rightfully cautious about negative impact to their print revenues. Ultimately this is a business model problem to solve rather than a technology problem. Once publishers and authors adopt a business model that allows them to safely monetize their digital content (ad monetization, freemium subscription models etc) there may be an appetite to drop digital rights management and open up the treasure trove of quality eBook content to search engines and marketing. Digital music went through a journey of its own before it dropped DRM. However, most industry experts agree that music and the written word are quite different when it comes to digital distribution and consumption.

While publishers, authors, and retailers ponder how to evolve their business models, technology companies are already knocking at the door. Or more accurately, starting to nibble at the corners. Google has been scanning print books for many years now and launched a program called snippets:

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/common.html

They talk about how snippets of copyright books can be surfaced in search queries so users can see the context within the book before making a purchase decision. It is a short distance from this capability to surfacing ads related to that content. As with most things, technology advancement will prove to be an unstoppable force. The question is what the business and consumer landscape looks like on the other side.