Friday, July 27, 2007
Magazines Thriive Outside the Paper
Do you remember the excitement when you found a copy of Sports Illustrated or Popular Mechanics in your mailbox and couldn't wait to scan the table of contents to see what articles were included so that you could figure out what to read first?The web has all but killed that magic as the ubiquitous of availability of free content makes articles on your favorite subject only a few keystrokes away. This is a huge problem for magazines that have had to find a way of combining their unique depth with breadth and rapidity of the Internet.
Magazine publishers have been more active than ever during the past months in adding videos, blogs and interactive features to compliment their core content. According to the Magazine Publishers Association (per MediaPost), digital initiative increased 139 percent over last year in the second quarter of 2007.
TVGuide and Conde Nast were among the busiest publishers, with new advertising initiatives, daily features, and content partnerships. Newspapers have had a hard time retaining readers, but at least people understood that they would always have new content every day.
Magazine publishers have worked hard to change that perception about their websites in their quest to remain timely, which is not easy when your print content only comes out 1-4 times per month. So a "magazine" is now a cross-media venture that includes social networking, videos, personalization, and oh yeah, a few dozen pages of hard copy.
Posted By John Gartner at 09:40 AM
Permanent Link: Magazines Thriive Outside the Paper
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