Gilbane Research Report - Digital Magazine Editions - (Page 45) Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Best Practice Cases The Challenge The Information Today management team set the specific goal to moving subscribers from print media to a hybrid print and digital reading experience. Their publications are free and targeted towards groups of readers with specific professional interests. Creating the richest reading experience helps readers connect with their content more often and for longer periods of time. This helps them to generate additional advertising dollars. Meeting the Challenge Information Today has 12 magazines. Streaming Media is at the forefront of their digital publishing initiative and is the publication that most often experiments with new digital functionality. The team selected Nxtbook because of the ease of deploying digital editions and the very strong support for rich media. They like the Nxtbook business model and find them to be excellent publishing partners. Results They have had success in lining up sponsors for specific issues, including a newsletter promoting the digital issue. Because of their name and industry focus, Streaming Media advertisers and authors incorporate high-quality rich media. These links give some excellent examples of rich media in action: http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0407/, http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/NXTbook/bestofnxtbook/index.php?startpage=32, http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/NXTbook/pubrecguide/index.php?startpage=14 The associated Web site has lots of video, audio, and flash and is very well coordinated with the magazine and conferences. All aspects of the brand attract more people to the community and help sell more advertising and conference registrations. Their media kit is totally digital. The sales team likes to be able to demonstrate where the ad placement will be and to show typical digital ad performance data. Advertisers love the tangibility provided by Nxtbook’s reader statistics package. They now attribute 70% of their revenues to digital publishing efforts. Lessons Learned They prefer to provide both print and digital editions to all subscribers. The digital edition offers faster delivery of content and better searchability and linking, and is more vivid because of the rich media content and advertisements. The print edition is the physical presence that provides credibility for the publication. Readers still like to browse the printed edition. They experimented with online communities but had only modest success. The popularity of their conferences suggests that community is an important part of their franchise and they plan to try another set of online communities in the near future. ©2008 Gilbane Group, Inc. 45 http://gilbane.com http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0407/ http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/NXTbook/bestofnxtbook/index.php?startpage=32 http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/NXTbook/pubrecguide/index.php?startpage=14 http://gilbane.com
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