publication: innovations in magazine media
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There are five main trends this year,” says editor John Wilpers (above right). “In previous years we haven’t had anything that we could say ‘this
is for sure’. But this year really feels like the future is clearer than it’s ever been. “Things are different since when the industry saw the internet coming down the road and did nothing, but continued to resist and procrastinate. Now the large media companies and independent entities are creating innovation labs – start-ups are springing up, trying to keep companies ahead of the curve. This is a very good sign.” Wilpers says that mobile and video will soon be be the dominant platforms for consuming content, and that ‘big data’ will enable us to make much more informed decisions. Moreover, two forms of advertising will dominate – native and programmatic. “The former, because it fits everywhere, unlike display ads, and programmatic because it enables the extremely fine grained targeting of groups of consumers and individual consumers in real time. The ads can spot you in a nano second and target your behavior, etc.” So while there are clear trends, Wilpers also points out that there is no one publishing solution. It really is a smorgasbord of content. Says Wilpers: “When we started
Innovations five years ago there wasn’t even an iPad; tablets weren’t around. When they arrived they disrupted everything and people expected tablets to be an instant savior for magazines. Well that hasn’t happened. I think they will be very important, but they won’t be the salvation that a lot of people thought they might be. But putting that aside, the movement towards digital consumption is happening; but it will be just one way of many to get your content. This year we are seeing something that many people didn’t expect, which is the willingness of consumers to read long form content on their cell phones and tablets. So the ability
20 | Magazine World | issue 82_2014
for publishers and consumers to interact on mobile devices is now not a question but a reality. But print still has that tactile relationship with readers – of all ages.” Print, like radio – which has often been written off – isn’t going anywhere and is as bold and experimental as ever. “We have a chapter every year about what print can do that digital can’t. This year, a favourite example is Fanta, the soft drink manufacturer, who wanted readers to test their new flavour. And they had to do that in a print publication, by embedding the flavour in rice paper for readers to chew on. It was a wild success. You just can’t do that with a tablet.” But many publishers are trying their upmost to create the print experience on a tablet. “And so far it is working very well,” says Wilpers, who flags up the tablet’s great plus points. “The tablet can give you so much more than a print publication when it comes to interaction and video, slide shows, etc. The idea that there is one solution is no longer the case.” Monetising digital has been an issue since publishers flung open their websites and allowed everyone in for free in those
scary early days. But publishers are getting a grip and earlier experimentation is paying off. “Over the past three or four years it’s been shown that some things will work and that wasn’t the case previously,” says Wilpers. “There was a big question mark in the shadow of precipitous declines in print revenue. Now what we’re seeing is that people will tolerate pay walls. They will pay for content that they can’t get anywhere else.” And, also, publishers have looked to claw back lost revenue through other revenue streams – ecommerce and events, for example. Says Wilpers: “Magazines have to look at alternative streams of revenue and Atlantic is one of the best at creating events. Authors who write for the magazine host events for people interested in their niches. And people will pay a surprising amount of money to attend these things. The list of events Atlantic runs is stunning. Elsewhere, a Watch publisher is making 30 per cent of it income through events.” But just as publishers enter new lucrative areas, others are muscling in to their terrains. It’s called convergence and it’s produced formidable competitors like YouTube and Google who are producing magazine-style content. Video, of course, is their speciality. But can they produce a field of wild flowers from a gardening publication made of rice paper? Or a plane which literally flies off a front cover of an aviation magazine? It’s all there, in the pages of Innovations in Magazine Media World Report 2014, in print and on all other devices. Here’s a taster…
Programmatic advertising While programmatic advertising has been around for roughly a decade, it has exploded in the last year. “We are seeing entire markets moving en masse [to programmatic advertising],” said Jay Stevens, international general manager at automated advertising seller Rubicon Project, which sells News
fipp.com
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