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Market Overview

Taking Things Digital with Dow Jones President Todd Larsen

Podcast Length: 
3:11

Hi we are at the Ignition conference with Todd Larson, President of Dow Jones. Hi Todd, how are you doing today?

Good. How are you?

Good

We just listened to you talk about Wall Street Journal's various properties and success. One thing you pointed out was the iPad success. How long ago did you release your iPad app?

We released it right when Apple released the product. We had been working on it a couple weeks before hand and tried to build an app that's really pretty unique in the space where it's very much a newspaper reading experience but in a total digital form factor and the response from consumers has been fantastic the engagement that we see with it has been off the charts. And we've had great response.

Have you done any unique marketing strategies? Or have you just marketed it through your various online and offline properties?

Mostly through our own properties. We have a very extensive network to use as a platform and so we have advertise in the paper and across our digital properties. The one thing about the iPad is that it has very much of a single distribution point through the store. And we have been able to be very popular out of the gate and that has made it easy for consumers to find us and really the growth has continued very strongly.

Do you have plans to introduce any more iPad apps? Or is it going to innovate off the original app?

We are very interested in the concept what else can be done to create more consumer engagement and it's not just about iPad, it's about tablets. You are going to see a large proliferation of tablets in the months to ahead and so we look at being aggressive in the tablet space as important and I think you are going to see us innovate a little bit more in terms of how we put content in the hands of the consumers.

So you are agnostic towards tablets?

We are interested in where they scale. And they are scaling the iPad today so that's something that is really important. As a long term strategic play, we are interested in where consumers are engaging in content.

One final question, your model unit, subscription versus the WJS site, do you have any plans to change that in the future?

We are really happy with the model. We feel that there has to be a layer of content that is successful with consumers. You have to engage them and let them try it and make them feel more confident about subscribing. And at the same time, we have to make sure that we are putting a lot of valuable content in a protected place in order to preserve our business model so I think you will see us continue to work both sides of the equation.

Thank you very much. We appreciate your time.