Two companies in Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP Group are working together on an ad-supported paid content initiative, called The Content Project, reports
The Wall. Scheduled to launch in first
quarter of next year, the idea behind the Content Project is that users pay a fixed fee each month, giving them an electronic wallet, to access a pool of content across a range of sites. The fee is
then shared between the media owners rather than paying one fee to a single company. TCP is a joint venture between WPP digital subsidiaries 24/7 RealMedia and Schematic.
(Quote from The Hangover) "Yeah, that's not gonna happen." Letsee - first I have to decide that I'm willing to pay for content, then I have to get a digital wallet thingy and transfer money to that, then I have to decide where I'm gonna spend my "digital content bux" and make sure the content I'm interested in is on one of those sites, etc. etc. I'm sure the back-end ifrastucture companies will make big billing dollars on this before WPP pulls the plug - good for them! Will consumers embrace this concept? Hell, half of them won't even understand what you're talking about. Does anybody remember the digital script called "Beans"? It was gonna replace cash on the web - even Whoopee Goldberg endorsed it. Just another Epic Fail in the making...