Gilbane Research Report - Digital Magazine Editions - (Page 126)

Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Conclusions those valuable referrals that will bring readers back to a publisher’s Web site as one of their key points of origin. Community – Similarly, publishers need to accept that their roles as information providers exist within readers’ communities. The more they can foster the healthy growth of such communities, the more traffic and brand recognition they will achieve. Auditability — The best and most innovative content products will attract significant readership that can be monetized in a number of ways. Advertising has long been a key part of most publishers’ revenue model, and before the advent of digital publishing, audited circulation was a critical factor in determining advertising rates and billing advertisers. Because of the importance of accurately determining the number of copies of a publication that were actually circulated, a sophisticated set of standards and requirements have long been established to measure the circulation of printed magazines and newspapers. The real question for publishers is whether they can work within the necessary auditing bureau strictures and still produce an innovative digital product that will excite and delight their subscribers. The key issues are the consistency and placement of content between digital and printed editions. The requirement that digital pages maintain a similar appearance to the original printed page has made it difficult for readers to read and navigate pages on digital displays where the form factor is very different. We believe that publishers should weigh the pros and cons of conforming to the standards required for the digital publication to be considered auditable. While it is terrific when digital editions can add to audited circulation figures, maintaining Auditability can become a pyrrhic victory if Auditability standards limit the development of the content and features required to offer subscribers compelling value proposition. There have been productive dialogues between publishers and the audit bureaus that do such an excellent job of helping publishers quantify their circulation in a consistent fashion. As digital markets continue to emerge and evolve, audit standards for digital publications will become more sophisticated so that they enable the growth of digital readership while still portraying an accurate description of readership for advertisers. For example, statistics on the time that readers spend on certain pages of digital publications and measuring the number of “click-throughs” provide advertisers with new forms of tangible evidence as to the effectiveness of their advertising investment. These new measures can augment traditional circulation data. Deploying archives — The continued popularity of search engines results from readers seeking information on a specific topic or finding an answer to a question. A significant benefit of a digital replica edition is that it stands as a record of what was happening in an information domain(s) during a certain time period. For example, The Guardian has built an extremely robust archive of over 1 million pages. This archive has become a very important research tool for students, scholars, and experts and has become a valuable part of The Guardian's digital publishing strategy. Remembering that many people are looking for specific, authoritative information or the answer to a question, ©2008 Gilbane Group, Inc. 126 http://gilbane.com http://gilbane.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Gilbane Research Report - Digital Magazine Editions

Gilbane Research Report - Digital Magazine Editions
Table of Contents
Introduction
Section One: The Data
Section Two: Best Practice Cases
Nxtbook
Bentley Systems
Graduate Prospects
Hearst
Information Today
Marine Log
Vendor Description
Section Three: Buyer’s Guide
Section Four: Visionaries
Section Five: Conclusions
The Authors
About the Gilbane Group, Inc.
Our Sponsors

Gilbane Research Report - Digital Magazine Editions