Just a quick observation - perhaps a poor one - but are there big changes - really big changes, I mean - afoot in the world of home computing and the web? For example, Microsoft adCenter launched - Ballmer says Microsoft evolving from software to media company could be something major, couldn't it?
And from earlier this week, Amazon Drops Google From A9 And Alexa - replaces it with Windows Live Search.
There have also been mutterings about Microsoft doing a deal with Yahoo (perhaps driven by the fact they lost out when Google beat them to a deal with AOL last year...?)
Skype seem to be evolving a unified messaging product (e.g. Skype SMS is new out as are large audio chat rooms (way bigger than conference calls). They're eBay, aren't they, Skype? And eBay are talking to Microsoft and Yahoo, I heard...
I also thought it quite amusing that Google have been sulking this week about who should get top billling as the default search engine in a newly installed browser.
Now my head hurts.... is there something happening? ... or perhaps these companies are playing these games all the time, and I've only just spotted them dancing... Battelle says (of Microsoft and Yahoo): "This seems to be a non story. Everyone talks to everyone about everything, all the time. End of story."
Ok - I'll go back to ignoring them again (it must just have been a case of buses coming in threes for me to notice this time round).
Anyway - the point of the post was - the web seems to becoming an ad revenue driven space in many respects. What potential is there for ad and affiliate fee supported courses? E.g. if you're 'free' course has a text book, and you sell the text to the student via an Amazon affiliate link, you get a cut, right? What other potentially learning related affiliate programmes are there, I wonder? How about some of the big academic databases - do any of them have affiliate programmes? Or the British Library?!
You'd want any ads to be relevant - and perhaps add utility value as content in their own terms - too. Job listings would be an obvious source of advertising (doing a course, want a better job...) and potentially a source of small fees arising from any successful job placements that result from a click-thru on the learning site.
Something else I heard to do driving back from the school run, on an IT conversation/Accelerating Change podcast about The Future of Work was the comment that eBay had created a platform on which other people could do business (and pay eBay for the privilege). An old story, yes, but is there a platform that would allow something like the OCI to become revenue generating by allowing other people to do business via it (recruitment and dating agencies, book fulfilment etc.).
Or what about ad-supported OU courses in place of a course fee, all other things being kept equal, except, perhaps, that you'd have to buy the course books yourself from via an approved link, or if you wanted a printed copy of the course material (otherwise provided as a PDF) you'd have to pay for it (or get it printed on demand from a listed service that passed the OU a commission). And if there was commercial software in the course, maybe you'd have to buy it yourself (at an OU negotiated educational discount, of course, but with the OU taking a small commission fee too).
To take a lead from Amazon (who want you to fulfil your purchase desires however they can, even if it means sending you off to a third party seller) there should also be links to a second hand course materials market. (Just for completeness, you can purchase some OU materials on their own (i.e. 'outside' of a course) via OU Worldwide.)
Posted by ajh59 at May 4, 2006 12:56 PMAnd MS are buying a company that puts ads into xbox games
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/04/microsoft_ponders_massive_purchase/
I wonder if anybody has done any market research to see if students would be put off by advertising in courses, especially if it meant a reduction in fees.
i can just picture in my head a big full screen banner appearing before all moodle courses saying something like
"This course was brought to you by budweiser, the official beer of the open university"
Then in the course text you could have:
"That was tough concept to grasp, why not take a break and enjoy a nice cool budweiser"
I don't know if anyone has asked those marketing questions - or what the answer from current and potential students would be - but I am prepared to ask the answer in a corporate fool sort of way, if only to discount it because it's not useful or interesting...
I think the sorts of advertising, and it's placement, would have to be carefully managed, of course, and would not necessarily be appropriate for all courses. (But for things like the Open Content Repository, why not take adverts for courses from other HEIs? Or Learndirect suppliers, etc? Or at least place out own course adverts? - 'people who studied this object also went on to study X123", etc.)
Things like the OU short courses are a different beast to the larger courses that we run, of course, as are the Openings courses, and taster material that appears in the course catalogue, or perhaps on open2.net.
The Open Content Initiative may also open up new audiences/innovate new delivery models that act as part of a learning journey that ultimately leads students from informal content/study to our degree products.
I wouldn't necessarily rule out a viable ad supported content model for some mini-courses/learning objects that appear early in a learning journey that begins with someone stumbling across out content - formal or informal - somewhere in the course of their daily life.
PS Might I also refer the interested reader to the increasing number of corporate sponsored professorial Chairs!;-)
Posted by: Tony Hirst at May 5, 2006 11:56 AMBy the by, I heard someone refer to MS earlier this week and mean MysSpace, rather than Miscrosoft, by it...
Posted by: Tony Hirst at May 5, 2006 11:59 AM