Digital Media Comes of Age

Digital Media Comes of Age
By Vin Crosbie
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3630189
A consumer magazine whose multimillion copy circulation has been declining for decades seeks a digital media chief. According to its recruitment ad, the digital chief's main responsibility "will be to develop and launch profitable new digital services that increase the circulation of the company's renowned publication."

Do you remember when you were a child and your parents dressed you up and asked you to open the door and greet guests at their dinner parties? Years later when you were a teenager, how would you feel about doing that? Would you like that to be your main responsibility now that you're an adult?

I'm amazed at how many magazines still focus on digital media primarily as a mechanism to drive traffic to print and reverse the inevitable decline of that traditional medium.

Using digital media primarily as a way to increase print circulation might have made a bit of sense in the Internet's early years, when it was opened to the public in 1991. Yet when public use of the Internet entered its teenage years and began to become a mature medium in its own right, all print media companies should have acknowledged that and stopped using digital as an adjunct, billboard, or child to the parent operation. Though many magazine companies have made that change, it's amazing how many still have not. (The same can be said about many broadcast companies' treatment of digital media.)

Public use of the Internet will be 18 years old next year. It can still be a bit reckless and uncertain, learning its way around, but it has certainly become a mature medium in all natural ways. It's about time that every media company began treating digital that way and acknowledging its full rights as a medium.

Moreover, when you were 18 years old, did your parents say that your main responsibilities were household chores? You probably weren't too happy about that, but at least it was better than being a cute little doorman whose role was simply to drive traffic to print. I mentioned that many media companies have begun to acknowledge that digital is maturing. I've noticed that many consumer magazines, broadcasters, and newspapers have lately rephrased their recruitment ads to say that digital will "be responsible for developing and launching profitable new digital services to enhance the company's stable of brands."

Although being responsible for new digital services that "enhance the company's stable of brands" is better than just "increase the circulation of the company's renowned publication," it's still not a happy role for digital. Using online to enhance the company's stable of brands means making the parent's household shinier and more attractive for a new kind of guest. It means dusting off the old place, trying to make the legacy brands attractive online, and convincing the digital audience that you're not a teenager driving your parents' Buick.

I sympathize with digital media executives who've been put in that teenage role. I can see some of the reasons they accept it. Life is less risky and more convenient under a parent's roof, and the allowance they get from their parents might be more lucrative than what they can get venturing out on their own.

However, the problem is that some -- probably many -- of those legacy brands don't make sense to operate online. Many are brands that developed as the best of what the print medium does and are unsuited for online media, no matter how much money the parents throw that way.

While it's OK for a legacy brand to have a digital presence, the purpose of digital shouldn't be to enhance traditional media brands, nor to leverage those brands' legacy goodwill online, when many are too old or can't naturally adapt for the online environment. Nor is simply rebranding old brands a good idea. Remember Pathfinder?

Business is business and not a place for the sentimental, even those sentimental about old brands. If the legacy brand is old and tottering in its own medium, there are probably natural reasons for it. It's not digital's role to give life-support to declining legacy media or legacy brands. Whenever a new medium comes of age, its primary role is to venture out on its own, not prop up its parents or legacy.

Digital media is coming of age. It's about time for digital media to venture out on its own. It's time for media companies to stop treating it like a child.

The Real Viability of Digital Editions

The Real Viability of Digital Editions
By Bob Sacks
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=exjwyocab.0.5fadzocab.cuf4zubab.1&ts=S0350&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pubexec.com%2Fstory%2Fstory.bsp%3Fsid%3D110150%26var%3Dstory

Resistance to digital magazines is futile. Here's why.
I've been inundated lately with e-mail requests about the viability of digital magazine editions. The letter that put me over the top was from an old and dear acquaintance, who is a senior production director, that said, "Digital editions of magazines will never get traction with the magazine-reading public." This is a ridiculous attitude. And if it is yours, too, bury it now with other ridiculous ideas like the world is flat and man will never fly.

Perhaps Jeff Gomez, author of the book "Print Is Dead," put it best when he wrote: "To expect future generations to be satisfied with printed books is like expecting the BlackBerry users of today to start communicating by writing letters, stuffing envelopes and licking stamps."

Do we expect magazine readers to become any less sophisticated as time and technology roll by? Things change, platforms evolve, business models adjust, and people's habits change, too. History is loaded with once-successful personal methodologies that are now nothing but antiquated dust.

This is not a discussion of whether or not print will survive. That is moot. What is important is how people will read in the future. Gomez's comment is spot on. How people read today gives us the smallest inkling of how people will read in the future. I'd be curious to know the number of words read on a computer screen (including PDAs, cell phones, e-readers, etc.) versus those read in print.

Digital editions will play a central role in the magazine business's future success. They are growing in popularity, and eventually will become ubiquitous. The only thing holding the format back presently is a perfect substrate. Computer screens are good for the task, but not perfect in their portability, flexibility and readability in various lighting conditions. What the industry is waiting for is a substrate that can match the robust nature and inherent abilities in digital editions.

The new technology is not far-off science fiction. The future is here now; it is just not widely distributed. Amazon's Kindle, Sony's Reader and several others are e-paper devices, and they are available now. These devices will not go away; they will only get better and more advanced at what they do-distribute content. In 2011, there will be full-color versions of e-paper products released. By 2025, e-paper devices will be the predominant way in which people read. And they will most likely be reading some formulation of digital-edition technology.

Perhaps we need to look at it this way: When will the digital page be more user-friendly than the printed page? Is it so impossible to foresee a future of comfort and ease holding a full-color, flexible screen that has the ability to project any book or any magazine with greater richness and depth of coverage than its printed predecessor?

Gomez hypothesized that, "It's not about the page versus the screen in a technological grudge match. It's about the screen doing a dozen things the page can't do." Digitized words should count for more. "What's going to be transformed isn't just the reading of one book, but the ability to read a passage from practically any book that exists, at any time that you want to, as well as the ability to click on hyperlinks, experience multimedia, and add notes and share passages with others," Gomez noted.

The same logic holds true for magazines. This is not a Hamlet-type argument, "to read or not to read." It is a question of what format/platform we will be most comfortable reading in the future. Nowhere in history do you find society willingly going backward. As Jerry Garcia is reported to have once said, "You are either on the bus or off the bus."

Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a printing/publishing industry consultant and president of The Precision Media Group (BoSacks.com). He is also the co-founder of the research company Media-Ideas (Media-Ideas.net), and publisher and editor of a daily international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, circulator and almost every other job this industry has to offer.

New study on digital magazine and newspaper editions: growth, trends, and best practices

New study on digital magazine and newspaper editions: growth, trends, and best practices
CAMBRIDGE MA, US: The Gilbane Group announced the general release of Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Growth, Trends, and Best Practices, a pioneering and comprehensive study of the growing market for digital editions of periodical publications, earlier this week.

The study features statistics that, in an industry first, unify audited data from two sources (BPA and ABC) with data from unaudited publications. Highlights from the statistics include:
The number of business-to-business (B2B) publications offering digital editions has increased over 300% from 2005 to 2007, with total subscriptions also increasing over 300%.

The number of consumer publications offering digital editions has increased over 200% from 2005 to 2007, with total subscriptions also increasing over 200%.

Digital vs. print penetration of B2B subscribers is up from 13.3 to 15.0%, while digital penetration of consumer publication subscribers is down from 2.2 to 1.4%.

The 130-page report includes 22 case studies of publishers, representing several dozen digital edition titles, which showcase a number of industry best practices identified by the study's authors. These span a wide range including big-name consumer magazines (Hearst, Playboy), leading B2B publishers (Reed Business Information, American Legal Media), daily newspapers (Toronto Sun, The Guardian), and catalog and directory publishers (Welco, Canadian Donors Guide).

Insights
The report also includes insights from five publishing technology visionaries on the state of digital editions and ideas for how to make them work for publishers. Visionaries include Gloria Adams of PennWell, Brent Lewis of Harlequin Enterprises, Mike Edelhart of Infovell, Peter Meirs of Time Inc., and Marta Wohrle, formerly of Hachette Filipacchi.

Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Growth, Trends, and Best Practices presents data from leading digital publishing companies. Contributors include Nstein, Nxtbook Media, Olive Software, and Texterity (Platinum Sponsors); Advanced Publishing, YUDU Media, and Zinio (Gold Sponsors); and Audit Bureau of Circulations and BPA Worldwide (Data Sponsors).

Authors of the report are Steve Paxhia, director of publishing strategy and technology practice at Gilbane, and Bill Rosenblatt, senior analyst. Both are said to be recognised authorities on publishing business and technology strategy and have worked with many different publishing businesses and technology vendors.

Impressive growth
Said Paxhia, "Our study shows that growth to date of the number of digital publications and the number of digital subscriptions has been impressive. While this paradigm shift is still in its early stages, there are plenty of examples where publishers using today's best practices have generated impressive results. This is the most exciting time to be in publishing since Gutenberg invented the printing press."

Frank Gilbane, CEO of the Gilbane Group, said, "This new report on digital publications illustrates our continued thought leadership in the publishing market, which is embracing many of the content technologies that we have been following since 1993. At the same time, it's only one of several first-of-a-kind market studies that Gilbane Group is releasing this year."

The study is available for immediate download at http://gilbane.com/Research-Reports.html.

The State of Digital Magazine Delivery, 2008

The State of Digital Magazine Delivery, 2008
How much circ should be digital and whether they should be new subs or converts.
Jane E. Zarem
FolioMag.com

Digital magazines are booming. The anecdotal and statistical evidence is overwhelming. Why? Analysts point to a variety of reasons, from a new generation of readers wanting a "high-fidelity" experience that combines elements of both print and online media, to the comfort level younger readers have with all things digital, to the natural synergy digital magazines have in the b-to-b space.

Whatever the reasons, the effect is obvious. Digital magazines appear not to be the transitional technology that they were perceived as not too long ago but are, instead, a hybrid technology of choice for many publishing brands and consumers.

There is no question that the growth has been remarkable, even putting aside the hype from the suppliers. Four of the major providers-Texterity, Nxtbook Media, Olive Software and Zinio-reported a combined 585 digital titles in 2005. This year, those same four suppliers report a combined 2,718 titles. And that almost certainly understates the total number of digital magazines, considering some longstanding vendors such as Qmags or Advanced Publishing weren't included, nor were the slew of vendors that have cropped up in the last couple of years, nor were the increasing number of printers that offer such solutions, nor were the magazine companies that produce their own digital replicas, such as 1105 Media.

Why do they opt to produce digital editions? Many reasons. Consider Playboy, for example. It has about 60,000 digital readers on a total circulation of more than 2 million, and it's mostly incremental readers. Phyllis Rotunno, senior VP of subscription circulation, is surprised more magazines haven't picked up on the digital trend. "It's a low cost of entry," she says, "and you really don't have anything to lose. Digital has been a great outlet for us, and we're happy with it."

"The number of publications that are moving into their initial digital effort is still very significant," says Steve Paxhia, lead analyst in the Publishing Strategy & Technology Practice at The Gilbane Group. "While the base isn't large, the number is actually growing quite nicely. It's safe to say that it is growing in excess of 25 percent per year."

And as that growth continues, Paxhia sees three predictable steps in the assimilation of digital-magazine technology:

1. People tend to accept the technology with which they're most comfortable. That would be a replica or facsimile-a post-process digital version of a print publication. That preserves the browsing metaphor that print readers get from a physical magazine, and it also offers scanability.

2. Often what happens, and it could happen simultaneously, before, or after launching a digital version, the publisher puts some or all of the magazine's articles on its Web site. That doesn't preserve the formatting and navigation of the digital edition, but the content is accessible and searchable. You then have both ends of the continuum, but that often becomes an internal bifurcation of the publisher's digital strategy.

3. Having the two ends of the continuum start to come together-blending the digital magazine and the Web site-is what many customers really want. Readers want to be able to search when they want to search and browse when they want to browse and contribute when they want to contribute.

Some of the Trends

The digital-magazine market has been vibrant for less than five years, but it nevertheless has enough maturity to have developed some interesting and important trends. Publishers are starting to realize, for example, that this isn't simply a plug-in technology. It requires focus and attention for the initiative to be successful. "It must be considered a standalone product that gets its own energy from the sales and marketing staff," says Nxtbook Media's marketing director, Marcus Grimm. "That will determine the success or failure of the digital publication."

Also, the technology has gotten much more robust in the last couple of years. Vendors can add RSS feeds, enhanced ads, and many more bells and whistles, while the publisher still needs to supply only a PDF of the magazine. That means that small publishers who can't afford to dedicate the resources necessary to keep up with cutting-edge trends can also participate.



"As the Internet continues to evolve, the high-fidelity experience has become very important to consumers," says Zinio CEO Rich Maggiotto. "The magazine layout is quite conducive to that and can become a graphically intense, rich media experience. Some content providers realize that they must expand to rich media in order to ensure against audience erosion. Others are slow to move. At the end of the day, though, publishers are content creators and audience builders. They have a brand, a trusted brand, not a magazine."

In large part, the industry is still being shaped by the needs of the marketplace, according to John Blanchard, VP of operations at Reed Business Information. "Quite frankly, I don't think it's moving fast enough," he says. "Digital edition vendors are monitoring the needs of the publishers and modifying their platforms accordingly. I'd like to see them come up with more innovative ways to use the technology and then integrate it within the publishing platform."

Defining the audience and finding the "sweet spot"

No one believes that digital will replace print. Yet kids 18-34-which Stephen Bernstein, president of Zenbu Media, calls "the sweet spot for digital"-are techno-savvy, on the computer a lot, and like their information portable. "And as the technology continues to improve, which all technology does, it will make them even more excited about reading in a digital format," he says.

On the other hand, Texterity's Cimarron Buser believes that trade magazines are "the sweet spot"-at least in terms of acceptance. "B-to-b publishers have found digital delivery useful because of the cost savings and the ability to reach out internationally," he says, "and advertisers seem to be responsive in that arena." The readers-whether consumer or b-to-b-are also responsive. Key findings published in Texterity's "Profile of the Digital Magazine Reader 2007" indicate high overall satisfaction with digital magazines (see chart, right).

Nxtbook's Grimm agrees. Nxtbook's clients are about 90 percent b-to-b. The company has been growing 30 percent for the last three years in both readership and revenue-a trend Grimm expects to continue. "Every month, more than a million people read a Nxtbook," he says, "and they stay inside for five minutes compared to the average stay of less than a minute on a Web page. The click-through rates are also higher. It's just a different type of experience." So he believes the b-to-b sector is "a natural" for digital delivery.

Of course, taking into account Zinio's 300 publisher clients that represent 850 mostly consumer digital magazines-a number projected to reach 2,000 titles by the end of the year-the consumer market looks like a "sweet spot," too.

Nevertheless, with the exception of portability and speed of receipt, there aren't a lot of reasons to prefer digital unless there is value added beyond the publication itself. "We've learned over the last year that it really isn't about pulling a print reader to digital or getting a digital reader to convert back to print," says Grimm. "It's really about giving the product to both audiences in the way that they prefer to receive it." And a reader may prefer one at one time and the other another time.

"Digital editions by themselves won't drastically increase your circulation," confirms Peter Spielvogel, director of product marketing at Olive Software. "You will find some environmentally conscious people who prefer to receive only a digital edition. The real value comes when publishers embellish their offerings with multimedia ads or content, adding more value for both readers and advertisers and attracting a more technology-oriented subscriber."