• ProAudio Review - May 2008 - Page 6
  Blow-in card that promotes signing up for the digital editon
  (tags: subscribe-blow-in-card)

This Old House has a special issue coming out, retitled Our Old House, because the content is user-generated. This is a very cool idea. That being said, it’s a shame they didn’t go the extra mile to make this a digital magazine, too. If people like something even better than sharing good content, it’s sharing their own content. Me thinks the links would’ve spread like wild-fire, resulting in good (and FREE!) promotion of this relatively forward-thinking idea.

Here’s a great example of a blogger directing people to Nxtbook digital magazine content, which gets the publisher more readers, who blog about the content and get more readers. Rinse and repeat.

Don’t ask us. Just read what a customer said in a recent issue of their magazine.

Texterity and BPA have teamed up to once again tell us what digital magazine readers are thinking. As a digital magazine marketer, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that 89% of readers said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their digital magazine. But as a technology provider, I’m once again embarrassed at the questions being asked that could be answered so much better from tracking software than from reader opinion.

From the get-go, such surveys are flawed because the vast majority of people agreeing to take them are already self-selecting themselves as being fans of digital magazines. After all, how likely would you be to answer 36 questions about something you don’t like?

What truly drives me crazy, though, are the questions that are asked which any reputable vendor already knows the answer to, including:

How much time do you spend reading your digital magazine?  While it sounds good to say 47% of readers spend at least 30 minutes inside the digital magazine, what this really says is that self-selected fans of digital magazines believe they spend at least 30 minutes inside the digital magazine. Truth of the matter is, the average digital magazine readers spends much more time inside the publication than they spend on a website, but more than 30 minutes? More to the point, reputable vendors KNOW this information - for each title and for all of their titles - and it’s far more vital than what self-selected fans "think." The average reader will spend more than five minutes inside a Nxtbook and visit 20 pages. Because it’s an average, half will spend more time. Half will spend less. Period.

Similarly, readers are asked if they "prefer" to read online, or download issues for online use. Again - why ask what they prefer? We know the exact answers, both for each Nxtbook and for all Nxtbooks. (8-10% download the offline version with us - not that I particularly think it matters.)

48% of readers "say" they clicked on an advertisement in a digital magazine. 48%? Really? Once again, good digital magazine vendors have the data to show you higher click-through rates than your website, though not anything as loopy as 48%. Why insult the intelligence of anyone to suggest such high numbers, though, particularly when the real numbers are found inside decent tracking data? I dare say that if any medium anywhere can get 48% of users to click on an ad, we should all just go do that (or at least advertise our wares in a medium that does that).

Another point in the survey says that digital magazine readers are engaged because a large percentage of them open the digital magazine within a week of being notified about it. In what world is how quickly someone opens an email an indicator of engagement? Engagement can be measured many way - time spent, click-through rates - but I’ve never heard speed at which an email is opened be one of them. Moreover, we’re finding that e-mail is only responsible for 50% of Nxtbook readership - so this point is moot for half of our audience.

Quite frankly, I don’t see a fit for such "analog surveys" of a digital product. I said it a few months ago when Zinio told us how their readers "felt" and I’m saying it again. Research like the recent Gilbane Study are critical because they offer publishers hard data about people are doing - and not fuzzy figures about what self-selected fans "think" they’re doing.

We have offered and will continue to offer such surveys to our customers only because for the publisher who hasn’t done a digital magazine before, it can shed some perspective on how their launch will go. But in aggregate, the "stake in the ground" information seems to lose a grip on reality.

Incidentally - if somebody more versed in marketing research than I cares to comment on the benefit of opinion-driven satisfaction surveys in lieu of data-driven research, I’m all ears. I’m sure there are some "perception is reality" thoughts that have merits that I’m not articulating well.

OK - that’s a loaded headline and depending on who you talk to, your website might be cleaning up, at least in terms of page views. Yet most publishers are seeing diminished engagement times and lower click-through rates. Why? Because web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online.

"Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so," said Dr Nielsen. "People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience," he said.

It’s a good article and explains that websites have been designed to answer search requests and that most efforts to increase engagement have failed.

In the other corner, though, we have the digital magazine, a product born from a printed magazine which had the singular purpose of creating an engaging brand experience. The results speak for themselves: people stay inside at for a longer period of time than they will on your website and they will click through at a higher rate. Your move: Sell the digital magazine to the buyers that want click-throughs and sell the page views of your website to those seeking low CPMs and high exposure.

Zinio CEO Rich Maggiotto was quoted recently saying about digital magazines, "It’s not Jetsons. It’s real." I suppose this will clear some things up for some people.

Meanwhile over at PaidContent, they whipped out the napkin and the pen to discover that when Playboy says the word "million," it’s not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things . Meanwhile niche B-to-B publishers stand to make the most money with both digital magazines and their websites. While a million saved isn’t much to Playboy, a quarter million earned by Nxtbook publisher Item Publications IS a big deal to them. As always, what we see is wholly dependent on where we stand, whether you’re George Jetson or Fred Flintstone.

Here’s a mini video of our new Digital Revenue Generation Guide. Enjoy!

• Digital Revenue Generation Guide [Cover]
  2008 Digital Revenue Generation Guide - cool ways publishers are making money with digital magazines.
  (tags: revenue, advertising, digital+magazines, salesbook, Nxtbook Minute)

Yesterday was my last day in NYC for the MediaBistro event that I was at since Monday. It was a pretty good content show. I had the privilege of seeing Chris Anderson from Wired Magazine and "The Long Tail" fame. I also got to see a conversation about the NY Times technology improvements with Jim Roberts, online editor there, and one of his colleagues (missed his name) that ran the special projects for the web. I also enjoyed Nicholas Carr of "Does IT Matter" fame as the last speaker of the event (he was interviewed by Business Week editor Jon Fine).

But, my favorite speakers/panelists at the event were Jon Wiley from Google and Robert Scoble from Fast Company TV. Wiley did a really nice job of explaining Google’s attention to user experience. Not only did he explain it as their number 1 focus in their list of "10 Things Google Has Found to Be True", I also enjoyed his definition of profit. He explained it more as a utility for the user, not a function of money making. He also showed a fun little research video that showed eye mapping technology with green lasers. That was cool in itself… but the user audio was awesome. It was of a clueless user that was trying to find a television. So, instead of narrowing his search through any number of ideas that he had spoken, he just searched for the word "television" instead. That was Jon’s way of saying that they still had work to do in making Google more intuitive/easy for the user. In his words (paraphrased), "It’s unacceptable to expect the user to learn how to search better".

Robert Scoble was a completely different experience. I enjoyed this presentation for the frenetic world that he must live in. At one point in the presentation, he showed his desktop with all the twitter "tweets" and people he was following and real-time conversations and video that he was recording as he spoke… My mind is spinning just thinking about it. It was simply crazy. His content was good… don’t get me wrong. But, I enjoyed his presentation for the manic quality it possessed. Very fun.