Latest Internet printing twist -- "pay-for-print"

With the higher end of the printing industry focused on Drupa for the next week, it's interesting to note a new print development far away from the colossal Düsseldorf, Germany trade show. A reader forwards this announcement ("Coupons, Inc. Debuts Brandcaster, Industry’s First Syndicated Promotion Serving Network"), describing their service which should benefit the desktop printer industry. Michael Liedtke's piece for AP (see "Ad network strives to make coupons more meaningful") provides an interesting description of the service, and who else stands to gain or lose from the successful adoption of this service, which serves up reader-relevant coupons to subscribing web sites, fashioned after Google's (NASDAQ GOOG) AdSense approach. Rather than paying for "click-throughs", the advertiser will pay "per print" for each coupon printed, with the rationale that the ad viewer motivated enough to print out the coupon should be a much more likely buyer.

On-line coupons were one of many original trends inspiring the printer industry's optimistic view of the Internet, as the enabler of the "distribute-and-print" transformation. Brandcaster promises a next-generation approach to printable coupons.

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