If You Can’t Sell The Content, Sell The App

Zagat’s, the famed restaurant review group but a poor performer on the online world, is changing online tactics. They are bypassing their botched subscription model in lieu of a great app. For Zagat’s, its  another distribution channel, like their still successful printed books. It’s mobile, it’s local, it’s search. Looks poised for success but only time will tell.

Yet another publisher where the paid subscription model failed. Most disappointing is that they seemed ideally positioned to make it on line.  As the NY Times beautifully put it, Zagat’s was the original ‘user generated content.’ Pre-blogs, pre-Facebook, pre-Yelp, they had all these people reviewing restaurants. But they kept it paid content, which kept it outside Google’s firewall. Now they’re seen as an also-ran to Yelp and the proliferating local restaurant and daily deal sites.

So the ad model (Yelp) vs the paid content model (Zagat’s). Yelp was worth $500 million to Google. Zagat was at $175-200 million in 2008. An interesting battle to keep an eye on.

Click Here for full article.