WHEN
pondering the future of digital magazines, the “I’m not dead yet” scene in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail may come to mind. Is the digital magazine
industry ready to be carted off with the rest of the dead? Gregg Hano, CEO of
MAG+, wrote a great piece pointing out the fact that we are actually just in
the infancy of digital magazines. Digital magazines at the moment only
represent a small portion of total magazine circulation, but their subscriber
base doubled from 2012 to 2013 (AAM semiannual periodical snapshot report).
Coincidentally, there is a rise in the number of digital magazines published
each year, especially in international markets.
It
is often forgotten that the digital publication industry has only been around
since 2010. This should come as no surprise considering it is also the birth
year of the modern tablet industry. As is to be expected with any emerging
market, it takes several years for the pioneers of the digital magazine age to
develop an earnest understanding of the underlying technologies. At the same
time, digital magazines are far less static than traditional publications,
given the devices they are viewed on and the intimacy of the user experience.
Understanding how to properly produce content for such a new, yet familiar
medium has been an exercise in passion and patience requiring a set of skills
that takes years to develop.
Digital
publications must also deal with a number of barriers that other publishing
avenues have never encountered. Unlike their print counterparts, these
publications have to abide by the consumer uptake of a small subset of digital
devices. A mere 3% of the US population owned a tablet following the initial
iPad release in 2010. In the first part of 2013 that number approached 34% (Pew
Research Internet Project). The barriers for digital magazine distribution are
thus decreasing. At the same time digitizing platforms are broadening the scope
of where digital magazines can be published, such as within websites and on
smartphones.
Other
industries are beginning to recognize the advantages of entering the digital
magazine publication realm — namely the ease with which they are able to
distribute content and capture a unique set of data. Of all the interested
industries, retailers are the most vehement. They are drifting away from the
traditional catalog layout towards lookbooks, which offer a more
lifestyle-oriented experience to consumers. In an attempt to increase
productivity and decrease production costs, brands are also beginning to use
digital publications to showcase new products to retailers. The growth of
business to business digital magazines is even greater than that of consumer
focused magazines, reinforcing the point that we are just beginning in what
should be a continued expansion of the digital magazine market.
With
viewership increasing year after year and more organizations producing content,
it looks as though we are only witnessing a beginning in this form of
communication. It is, however, still far too early to speculate what that path
of its evolution will look like. As barriers continue to fall, the adoption
rate for digital magazines should see growth. Digital magazines provide a
unique experience in an age where information flows quickly and readers jump
around between content. They have the opportunity to captivate audiences in
ways that many of their counterparts cannot. Creativity, therefore, will reward
digital magazine publishers well (by Ryan
Jones is co-founder and CEO of Pixbi).
No comments:
Post a Comment