EDITOR'S notebook

* Digital printing incorporating full color and variable data has gained traction. While still miniscule compared to the overall web and sheetfed offset printing market, double-digit growth rates for digital color will flourish. In response, we've added digital printing as a new primary specialties category on this year's PI 400 ranking. Marketers, it seems, are finally grasping the power of personalized communications and have developed more sophisticated databases to help drive higher response rates. Web-to-print, promotional transactional printing, one-to-one marketing/cross-media publishing and digital books have become hot applications, along with more hybrid products that incorporate digital personalization on offset printed shells. Just as lithographic printers are morphing into other value-added services, the real money in digital printing may not be in the printing itself. It can be found in providing ancillary services like database creation/hygiene and Web-to-print implementations.