In Five on Friday this week, college textbooks are becoming more accessible, thanks to the subscription model, Microsoft’s Windows 10 mail client tries an ad-supported freemium model, Facebook is making changes to its subscription messaging chatbot permissions, malicious ads are being embedded in ad images, and the traditional publishing model isn’t working.   

Cengage Makes College Textbooks More Affordable with Unlimited Subscription 

The rising costs of college make it challenging for many families to pay for college. Tuition is on the rise, as are housing costs, and then there are textbooks which cost a small fortune whether students need them for a quarter, a semester or longer. Cengage is hoping to change that using the subscription model. Their new service, Cengage Unlimited, launched in August with the idea that a textbook subscription makes a college education more affordable.

In “How Subscriptions Open a New Chapter for College Textbook Access,” PYMTS discusses how this model can be advantageous for students. Why the change? Todd Markson, chief strategy officer for Cengage, told PYMNTS the subscription plan is based on affordability and access.

“Students have had to make tough choices when presented with their course material. We’ve been really focused on affordability,” said Markson.

With a Cengage Unlimited subscription, students can get unlimited digital access to textbooks for $119.99 for four months, $179.99 for one year or $239.99 for two years. For students who prefer a print textbook, they can rent one for $7.99 per course. Cengage says it offers access to more than 22,000 digital textbooks and supplemental materials.

While a viable solution, the catch is that not all textbooks are available on Cengage, so a subscription might help students access some materials, but they may still have to pay for other textbooks not part of the program. Cengage is willing to work with institutions as well as individual professors to get specific materials on the platform.

“The textbook world, the courseware world, has never seen this, just because it’s such a different model – the industry was drunk off the high prices of textbooks, and we’re the ones who said, ‘Enough is enough, we have to change this,” Markson explained.

If this model is, indeed, successful, it is possible other competitors will enter the marketplace, but they may want to see what kind of success Cengage has with the model first. For more on this textbook subscription model, read the full story on PYMNTS.

Is Microsoft Testing Ads in Its Mail App for Windows 10?

If you are using the default Mail app for Windows 10, you may start seeing banner ads, reported Digital Trends last week. If you want to turn those ads off, you will need to buy an Office 365 subscription. Earlier this year, Microsoft did similar testing on Windows 10 devices that displayed banner ads for Office 365 when users hovered over the Mail, Calendar or People buttons.

Citing a support page for the Mail app, Microsoft said ads will appear for most types of email accounts including Outlook.com, Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Those who have an Office 365 subscription tied to their email won’t receive the ads. Microsoft claims they will use revenue generated from the ads to improve products and support.

Windows Central, who also reported the story, said the rollout of the ads in Mail was a mistake, and those ads are being turned off. They refer to a tweet from Frank Shaw, communications lead for Microsoft, in response to a tweet by @mehedih_.

Did Microsoft bow to pressure from users to turn the feature off, or was it truly an accident as Shaw says? We will probably never know.

Changes Are Coming to Facebook Subscription Messaging December 31

If your brand uses Facebook subscription messaging via chatbots, Facebook is changing the rules a bit, starting December 31. According to Search Engine Journal, permission to send subscription messages but be granted at the page level rather than the app level. These changes do not apply, however, to chatbots that send standard messages; they only apply to chatbots sending subscription messages.

So, what’s the difference between a standard message and a subscription message? Standard messages have a 24-hour windows in which they can be sent, and they may include promotional content. Subscription messages can expand beyond that time period but they cannot contain promotional content.

Subscription messages usually include news content or are used by productivity apps and personal trackers (e.g., fitness, health, wellness, finance), reports Search Engine Journal. Message recipients must opt-in for subscription messaging and the messages will have limited functionality. Subscription messaging is only allowed for “specific use cases,” according to Facebook’s developer support pages.

Starting December 31, individual Facebook pages that send subscription messages will have to apply for approval by going to Page Settings/Messenger Platform and under Subscription Messaging in the advanced settings section, click Request. The requestor will then be asked to provide additional information including a sample message, a description of how the page will use the subscription messaging feature, a screenshot, confirmation that the page will not use subscription messaging for promotional content and more.

To get all the ins and outs of this change, visit Facebook for developers online.

GeoEdge Report: Malicious Ads Embedded in Ad Images Are Growing Exponentially

A new GeoEdge report shows that steganography is growing in popularity in the fourth quarter of this year. Steganography is a technique used by malicious advertisers to embed files, messages, images or videos in an ad image. GeoEdge, an ad security and verification firm, discovered the growing problem in its Real-Time Blocking solutions for publishers.

GeoEdge reported that Experian was the victim of one such attack this year. The ad, containing a hidden image invisible to the user, had malicious code embedded that redirected users to a phishing site targeting U.S. users. At the phishing site, users were asked for personal and financial information which has the potential to lead to identity theft.

This, of course, causes multiple problems. First, there are the ad dollars lost. Second, when readers visit a particular site looking for specific information but are caught in a web of malicious ads, they have a negative experience – a potentially risky experience – that may keep them from visiting that site again.

GeoEdge reports that, in 2017, auto-redirect malvertising attacks cost publishers $210 million and marketers $920 million, a total loss of $1.13 billion. GeoEdge estimates those figures could be 20 to 30 percent higher in 2019.

“The use of steganography increases the sophistication in the constantly evolving arsenal of tactics employed by malicious actors, making a detection technology solution which is updated weekly, daily and even hourly, coupled with real-time blocking, a necessity for publishers today,” said Amnon Siev, CEO of GeoEdge, in a November 15 blog post.

Why the Traditional Publishing Model Isn’t Working Anymore

As a kid growing up in the 1970s, I remember helping my friends with their paper routes, delivering the Vidette Messenger on our bikes after school. Those were the days people got their news from one of three major broadcast networks – ABC, NBC or CBS – or the local or regional paper. Now we have hundreds of TV news outlets, digital news outlets and newspapers are a dying breed. While in many aspects it is good to have so many places to get news, it has forever changed the traditional publishing model and, for many publishers, that model doesn’t work anymore.

In a recent article on Forbes, Cosmin Ene, the founder and CEO of LaterPay, explains that publishers had a captive audience once upon a time. Publishers had a steady stream of subscribers and advertisers to line their pockets to produce and deliver quality news. Now people go online to find their news, and there are so many competing news outlets and ways to access news – linear TV, desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones, and both local and national newspapers.

“That’s the daily habit of a 21^st-century consumer. And it means our real-world pattern of consumption no longer fits within the traditional publishing model,” writes Ene. “The average duration of a visit to a website today is less than two minutes. Despite this, subscriptions – and their punitive offspring paywalls – appear to continue to represent a publisher’s instinctive strategy for generating revenue.”

Consumers have to decide where to spend their subscription dollar, and in addition to news options, they have others competing for their attention – Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Apple Music, CBS All Access. How do consumers choose and how do publishers make a living? Ene suggests that maybe subscriptions aren’t the answer.

“Subscriptions still seem to be the primary model of choice, but as we have seen, that doesn’t really constitute choice at all,” Ene writes. “True choice is offering content in models that accurately reflect the user’s consumption behavior.”

Ene suggests that having different options available could be a good solution – allow low users to buy a few articles, let medium-usage readers pay for a day, week or month of access, and allow loyal subscribers the option of a longer-term subscription. Read more of Ene’s analysis and ideas in “What’s Wrong with the Traditional Publishing Model in the Digital Age” on Forbes.