Cover story: Digital Newsstands
HEARST, UK HEARST IS ONE of the big publishing beasts that shares the communal US newsstand Next Issue, alongside Condé Nast, Meredith, News Corp and Time Inc. It operates on the all you can eat model, but that hasn’t stopped Hearst from getting onto all the other newsstands out there. Jenny Tsai, director of digital media, explains:
“We went on Apple as soon as it came out and are on all the others too. Apple is by far the most effective – by virtue of being first and by being used by early adopters of tablet technology. But newsstands and business models depend on markets. Next Issue is only available in the USA. It allows people to buy a sub to access all Hearst titles. But a lot of newsstands in Asia have the all you can eat model. It is too early to say which model is best – we want to try all of them and reach the consumer in all possible ways.” Says Tsai: “We are keeping a close eye on the markets, trying to understand how we can deliver the best edition via which channel. We definitely see that we are reaching new audiences, with our digital editions.” Tsai says revenue depends on the title, although luxury and youth orientated titles
Join the conversation at the
DIGITAL NEWSSTAND FORUM FIPP will host its inaugural Digital Newsstand Forum (DNF) on 14-15 May 2014 in Bangkok, Thailand. The event will run alongside FIPP’s Worldwide Media Marketplace (WMM), which exists as a platform to facilitate cross-border licensing, syndication and other deals.
The DNF will explore a variety of topics integral to newsstands strategies, with a mixture of keynotes on strategic directions and success stories, as well as practical sessions that will give participants tangible takeaways on which to build their own digital newsstand offerings.
The DNF will provide an ideal platform for anyone shaping and executing digital publishing strategies – senior, commercial and content managers alike.
For more information about this event, visit
www.FIPPdnf.com, or contact
Claire@fipp.com. For advertising and sponsorship questions, contact
Stuart@fipp.com or
Andre@fipp.com.
Jenny Tsai, director of digital at Hearst, UK says the company is still learning and listening to audiences
are among the best. “A lot of it has to do with the tablet penetration of the particular demographic. Some titles definitely have a lot more potential. I think it is still early days. You can see the ABC circulation figures in the US at the moment pointing to incremental increases in [digital], but it’s small compared to print.” As far as analytics are concerned, Tsai
believes detailed information on consumers reading patterns are “fairly doable” in any of the digital editions. “This isn’t anything particular to the all you can eat model, per se. It’s just analytics that you can apply. We are always
trying to optimise the experience to see if we can get people to enjoy our content more.” Tsai says: “Publishers have a strong
wealth of content, and we haven’t yet mobilised all its strength and assets. We have gained good traction in positions that are similar to print, but there’s scope to do more”. “Digital newsstands provide a small percentage of revenues compared to print ones – but you have to be on them. They do provide other sources of information and they do increase audience reach.”
FUTURE, UK “THE SUCCESS WE HAVE seen most acutely across Apple Newsstand has been driven by our whole portfolio using our own software in FutureFolio,” says Richard Walker, director of consumer revenues. “This determination of our own roadmap and innovation for iOS has been key to our success. When working with other channels/platforms we can’t always work our own solution as hard as we can on iOS but we have still found significant incremental sales across these other channels. “Zinio was our original partner and it was our commitment to them back in April 2010 which saw the upward rise in our digital circulation sales as tablet penetration grew. It was exhilarating to increasingly see that customers were prepared to pay for content in a format they understood and appreciated.” Walker says the success they saw with the ‘lift off’ from the Apple Newsstand launch in October 2011 encouraged Future to always “seek to be there early” on other retail channels. This was the case for Google and
fipp.com
Richard Walker, director of consumer revenues at Future, UK, says their app activity is driven by FutureFolio “We believe that as the tablet and mobile
Amazon. “Combined with the experiences of our US business, we have seen these additional platforms make a significant incremental impact on our sales. It has been interesting and instructive to see the Google Newsstand customer, for example, indexing quite differently from the iOS customer in terms of the type of interest area that most appeals to that audience. iOS customers have generally been seen as customers with high propensity to spend but, equally, we have seen high value customers emerge on other platforms.
market matures, providing our content to potential customers is about interception and not interruption. We need to be where they are shopping and want to access content on the device they choose. Zinio, Magzter and Pocketmags have made it very straight forward to establish a presence on their platforms and for loyal customers who prefer to consolidate their magazine shopping in these environments. While Apple remains hugely important we continue to encourage other channels.”
issue 81_2014 | Magazine World |17
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