Publishers Should Create New Products to Attract Readers and Advertisers

6th October, 2012

Peo Strindlund vice president, sales Europe and Asia Pacific, Mag+, Sweden, gave publishers advice on how to publish a magazine app at the 3rd FIPP Asia Pacific Digital Magazine Media Conference in Seoul, Korea. "We believe you have to create new products to attract readers and advertisers - hence why we don't do magazine replicas. If you are publishing for print, be focused on that. If you want to publish on the tablet, adapt it accordingly."

Strindlund said it's really important to know how your readers are using your app, and what their levels of engagement are. Of course, this also helps when selling to advertisers. Strindlund finished by telling delegates not to be afraid of launching apps. "Just do it", he said. "Fail quickly, and try again."

Raul Suarez, managing director, Zinio International, Spain spoke about the changing landscape of the media industry since in the launch of the iPad. "The iPad has revolutionised the industry", said Suarez, "and tablets are the biggest cause of disruption the magazine media industry has ever seen."

Suarez went on to quote some interesting statistics about magazine apps, including: "Print users spend 45 minutes reading issues in print, 160 minutes for iPad" and "90 per cent of all daily media interactions are screen based." He also suggested that people now buy on one device and read on another - apparently desktop is still the preferred device to purchase on.

Vijayakumar Radhakrishnan, president, Magzter, USA believes that users should be allowed to purchase their favourite brands from anywhere, and read them anywhere. He suggested that different subscriptions for different devices confuse users, and therefore publishers must take this into consideration when considering extending their brand to different platforms.

Source: FIPP