I had the pleasure of moderating the session on channel strategy. The panel was comprised of executives from health care information companies that represented a variety of positions in the distribution value chain. Panelists included Michael Magoulias from FDC Reports, Wes Crews from Infotrieve, Tom Lee, MD from Epocrates, and Ezra Ernst from Wolters Kluwer Health.

Wes summed up the rationale for using channel partners when he said that one "can't be everything to everyone" and that channel partners are critical to reach certain geographic and vertical markets and backed up his statement with a chart that mapped out the market landscape for Pharma-Bio Information Services.

Furthermore, it has become increasingly important to provide content in the format and venue that specific customers require. Tom Lee from Epocrates described how his firm (at the time 3 entrepreneurs working out of a living room) was forced to create their own content because existing publishers couldn't provide the information in the form and format they needed to publish on a PDA for physicians to carry with them, nor were the publishers willing to alter their standard licensing fees to suit the individual physician application.

With respect to aggregators, the line between traditional aggregators and new aggregators was exemplified by their ability--and willingness--to provide sufficient value-add to publishers and to provide usage information and tracking tools to help publishers understand their customers. FDC Reports has discontinued using aggregators that won't provide any usage reports; Infotrieve responded that publishers should indeed demand such information and in its role as a distribution partner, Infotrieve understands that it is imperative to provide the information publishers need to understand their customers.

A couple of secondary themes emerged including how Google, Yahoo! and other big search engines are opening up the consumer channels and are increasingly driving traffic to paid content as well as free content. Google Scholar was given as a prime example of the latter. Ezra commented that Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), Wolters Kluwer Health's publishing imprint, currently derives more traffic from Google than from PubMed and pay-per-view sales are up over 100% as a result of opening up the content to Google--after only 3 months of using this new channel.

With regard to the consumer channel, the issue of pricing was raised, especially with respect to the migration from a fee-based to an ad-based revenue model. How can publishers maintain the economic value of their content in the face of emerging consumer channels where the content is viewed as free (even if it is subsidized)? No easy answers were given to this ongoing problem, however some examples of using partnerships to offer differentiated content and for subsidizing distribution were provided. In the wrap-up session of the conference, Skip Pritchard from Proquest suggested that pricing is the thorniest issues that publishers and aggregators currently face. No disagreement here. However, channel strategies play a critical role in the packaging and pricing of content products.