My take is this…we are already there. It’s very hard to distinguish the two. As you discussed, Publishers are there. Marketers have been there for quite a while (they’ve been getting sponsorship for their magazines and microsites for years now). This will only continue, if they decide to go in that direction. The opportunities are certainly there for most brands.

The difference to me is that we are all starting to notice.

Thanks
Joe

First: many, if not most marketers are terrible publishers. It is just too hard for them to take off their sales hat. They keep wanting to slip in hype riddled articles about how great their products are which they are convinced are “strong legitimate stories.” Marketing/PR content typically bombs in social media or custom publishing settings.

Second: publishing is still hard. Just because the technology exists to deliver content with little friction does not mean it will be done well. For years publishers struggled so hard with the technology and expense of distributing content through print. But now that is effortless by comparison, we realize there are other skills we had all along. In the past a key publishing skill, and by far the biggest expense, was to master the craft of buying paper, printing on it, and distributing it. Today the biggest skill set required is to assemble an audience and engage it. Some marketers will master it, some won’t.