InkJet Age

SEP 2014

Inkjet's Age, a print supplement to Quick Printing, is a business and technology brand dedicated to corporate and senior management and focusing on issues surrounding inkjet printing technology in all its forms. Inkjet's Age covers the industry news,

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16 SEPTEMBER 2014 • INKJET'S AGE www.MyPRINTResource.com medium put it behind what is known as a "paywall," sort of an Internet tollbooth. Using inkjet imprinting techniques, á la the interactive advertising approach, they can print a one-day, one-time, single-use key that varies from copy to copy and lets indi- vidual readers go online and pass through the paywall. They fill out a registration form to access desired content. "From that, the newspaper learns about who is coming through the paywall and can offer up sug- gested content," said Mansfield. "The goal is not to just have them in for one day, but to subscribe to the content." The Last Mile Is the Hardest Mile Thanks to inkjet printing and sophis- ticated front ends, a newspaper could conceivably be completely personalized. Readers could select the topics that interest them, like Google Alerts, and could then be sent their own custom newspaper. Or could they? Actually, there is nothing technologically difficult about personalized newspapers. The idea falls down, Mansfield said, in "the last mile." "We have the technology today to understand what a subscriber wants, we can print unique newspapers by sub- scriber, and get them off the press," he said. "But newspaper distributors do not have the same approach to delivery that mail services do. We can't guarantee that the newspaper gets off the truck to the right person." It has nothing to do with inkjet, or printing, or technology. "The paperboy doesn't operate in the same way the Post Office does." The Kodak Prosper S Series inkjet web press. Close to Home A lot of these hybrid and full-inkjet newspaper applications are being developed in Europe and Asia. What is preventing these kinds of applications from being more prevalent here in the States? Mansfield says that there is some move- ment in that direction here at home. Large- ly, though, it's stymied by the still-long run lengths of domestic newspapers—even if they are declining—as well as publishers wanting to continue utilize their current capital investments—their presses—rather than investing in new hardware. There are other factors, not the least of which, felt Mansfield, is that the relation- ship with the newspaper is very differ- ent in the U.S. than abroad. More and more U.S. readers are content to get their news from online sources, while overseas the printed newspaper is still relatively healthy, at least for now. The Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together Even if full-copy inkjet printing of newspapers has yet to scale up, publishers can leverage inkjet to pursue unique ap- plications, especially those that mix offset and digital. "I am very bullish on the use of hybrid imprinting," said Mansfield. "Taking inkjet and doing what it does best, and the newspaper press to do what it does best, and marrying them together. That is, you use inkjet for late-breaking news and scores and segmenting advertis- ing circulars." Instead of mass printing circulars for an entire city or metro region, you give the advertiser the opportunity to segment that area, and print versioned circulars that are distributed in smaller sections of that area, such as around indi- vidual Home Depot or Lowe's locations— the "hyperlocal" approach. And with inkjet, said Mansfield, "the printer doesn't have to stop the press to change plates to do this. It's all inline." ✚

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