Digital Magazines have certainly come of age in 2012 and many of the leading resellers, such as Amazon, Apple, and Barnes and Noble, are seeing massive sales. Advertisers are starting to recognize the digital editions as viable investments for their promotional budgets. A recent report by the Custom Content Council and ContentWise found that 39% of marketing budgets accounted for digital advertising. This was a 12% increase from 2011 and certainly is a sign of the times.
One of the barriers that advertisers face in the digital realm is the core metric data that tracks user behavior and provides analytics to advertisers. Many big resellers don’t provide this type of data, but some companies like Newspaper Direct via PressReader have designed its entire digital strategy on providing big data. One of the ways the publication does this is by providing heat-maps that track where users are clicking and articles read in the magazines and newspapers in real-time. This is invaluable information to people who advertise on the platform, because they receive comprehensive data on clicks and user behaviors. The larger companies also track this kind of data, but are often very secretive on the exact type of demographics they provide.
The rise of digital magazine consumption is rising with the sheer amount of tablets sold. Apple has sold over 100 million iPads since first launching two years ago and an Android tablet is activated almost every minute. Advertisers are keen to adapt to this new digital trend with something other than evasive adverts that permeate the internet.
One of the barriers advertisers face in 2013 is how to make their content more engaging. How do they get users to interact with their campaigns? One of the most interesting new models has been to offer Perks via San Francisco based start-up Klout. This company measures social media visibility for brands and people, measuring comprehensive elements from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and many other platforms. The more re-tweets, followers, and engagement you have on a core level, the higher your Klout score. Many valley based companies actually ask applicants what their score is and companies offer significantly higher perks to people with high scores. Many brands like Loreal have done digital magazine adverts that bring people to the Klout platform and then give away free cosmetic kits to people who opt in. This is a savvy method because the company knows you clicked on its ad and gains your address and name for its own internal user. Other companies give away products based on Pinterest galleries and encourage users to take pictures of themselves with the product in question.
The big thing advertisers need to do in 2013 is to build social media interactivity on new media formats, other than Facebook and Twitter. They can statistically provide a higher degree of engagement and allow their client base to get creative around their brands. During this coming year, it will be interesting to see more multimedia based adverts in the digital editions of the magazines and how the industry gravitates from a traditional printed format.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.