Clare Cook

Magazines and the digital future

Understanding how best to exploit the digital future is a key question for magazines and I pose some conceptual as well as practical thoughts here.This is unedited so please do skip the waiting-around-intro.

Magazines look for multimedia platforms

Time Inc publishers are the latest in a line of publishing houses to dabble with multimedia platforms with their Real Simple TV premiere.

Better Homes & Gardens, Elle, Food & Wine, Marie Claire and Gourmet have also recently launched multimedia platforms.

 The premiere for Real Simple. Real Life aired on October 17 following on from the annoucnement in March that there would be the new lifestyle makeover multi-media platform of the same name, which encompasses the weekly television series, dedicated web site and a monthly TV section in the magazine that includes more in-depth profiles of makeover subjects.

There are implications to the financial affairs of Time Inc and possible job cuts.

Increasingly, these crossover strategies are part of a fast-growing trend among magazine publishers.

Marie Claire has hoped to tap into the booming reality TV market, Hearst's Marie Claire has partnered with the Style Network to produce "Running in Heels," a weekly series chronicling the lives of Marie Claire editors, writers and interns.

Meredith Corporation created a new multichannel VOD platform for cable: “Parents TV”. Free of charge to Comcast's 14 million digital subscribers, it features video on demand programming on 6 different channels. Meredith's Video Solutions department, has developed material with editors at Meredith magazines: Family Circle; American Baby and Parents.

Last year Wired magazine increased its online video offerings when it merged its magazine and website operations. The magazine has also started a Wired Video subdomain, in partnership with The Feed Room.

 

Closures at Hearst

The Hearst Corporation - publishers of Marie Claire, Esquire and Good Housekeeping - is streamlining to make room for the credit crunch.

It has announced that O at Home, the spinoff to its The Oprah Magazine, will close. Staff are expected to be reallocated to Country Living.

And Sarah Gray Miller has been named editor-in-chief of Country Living magazine, Cathie Black, president, Hearst Magazines announced today.

Staff cuts at other Hearst magazines look possible.

The news from Hearst extends a string of closures, consolidations and layoffs that have racked the magazine industry in the last few months.

 

In October, Hearst stopped publishing CosmoGirl, folding it into Seventeen magazine, though it remains as a separate website.

 

NEW YORK, October 10, 2008 — Hearst Magazines has made a strategic decision to consolidate its teen publishing activities into Seventeen, the largest-selling monthly teen magazine on newsstands.  Effective with the December issue, on newsstands November 11, CosmoGirl will cease as a print magazine, remaining online only at cosmogirl.com. CosmoGirl’s subscriber base will be folded into Seventeen. 
 
Hearst Magazines will continue to publish Seventeen and its annual Seventeen PROM issue as well as focus on the Hearst Teen Network of websites, which includes Cosmogirl.com, Seventeen.com, Teenmag.com, eSpin.com, MyPromStyle.com, and MisQuinceMag.com.  Hearst’s Teen Network of sites ranks in the top 10 trafficked entertainment sites on the Web, according to Comscore.
 
CosmoGirl’s Editor-in-Chief Susan Schulz will be staying on at Hearst to work on special projects.  Publisher Vicki Wellington will become publisher of Food Network Magazine, which officially rolls out in 2009.

Regarding O, a company spokesperson said, “We have decided to consolidate the editorial content of quarterly spinoff O at Home back into the flagship magazine.”

120-year-old Hearst has been eager to embrace the digital portfolio and make sites as 'efficient' as possible.

The company has long been known in the industry for keeping costs down more than major competitors like Condé Nast and Time Inc.

Hearst launched O at Home in 2004, and its circulation quickly rose to more than 1.4 million, from 600,000. But it competed for readers and advertising in a very crowded field of magazines.

Hearst titles:

Country Living

Cosmopolitan

Esquire

Good Housekeeping

House Beautiful

Harper's Bazaar

Marie Claire

Popular Mechanics

Seventeen

Grazia starts office in shopping centre

Thanks to magculture for flagging up the new offices of Grazia.

What a cool idea!

In a clever and mutually beneficial tie-up, Grazia has set up office in the new Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush.

The whole production team – 46 people – have moved from Shaftsbury Avenue to a specially built open office, called The Pod.

While the real and rather mundane process of producing the magazine continues – there are efforts to make the experience interactive: you can have your picture taken for a pretend front cover!

On the back of all the other efforts we see of magazines opening up, it's all fun, fun fun.

Thanks to magculture for flagging up the new offices of Grazia.

What a cool idea!

In a clever and mutually beneficial tie-up, Grazia has set up office in the new Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush.

The whole production team – 46 people – have moved from Shaftsbury Avenue to a specially built open office, called The Pod.

While the real and rather mundane process of producing the magazine continues – there are efforts to make the experience interactive: you can have your picture taken for a pretend front cover!

On the back of all the other efforts we see of magazines opening up, it's all fun, fun fun.

Liverpool.com moves onto Twitter

This is exactly what I am talking about: Liverpool.com grabs the bull by the horns and launches on Twitter.

"Online, on your coffee table, and now on Twitter, Liverpool.com is the monthly magazine and website at the heart of city living, working and playing."

Great stuff - and I will be really interested to see how this works for you guys.

If only the Sunday Times Magazine were online

Credit where credit is due for a lovely looking relaunch.  The Sunday Times Magazine is back to putting investigatory journalism and photojournalism at the fore.

But I can't help wondering - as the online web strategy of magazines goes - that they are missing a trick by not having a separate portal or web space to let the mag breathe online.

Think of all the lovely opportunities for photo journalism...

Think of all the opportunities for behind the scene pics...

Think of all the opportunities to chat and peruse...

At the end of the day, there are as many people happy to slob on the sofa with a laptop on their lap on a Sunday as a piece of cat-wee smelling plastic castle wrapped paper.

I'm not sure why Relative Values and A Life in the Day have to be illergic to digital, especially not when the new layout will be part of an ad campaign including TV, "outdoor" and, you guessed it, online ads.

Magazine website strategy - income generation

IT IS difficult to imagine a period of more dramatic or rapid change for the magazine consumer publishing industry.

As publishing houses increasingly embrace the opportunities in the online community, organisations have to be ever more inventive in their attempts to create good content powered by a myriad of new delivery tools.

So, as part of my research with The Preston Report, UCLan and Haymarket, we set about looking at a key group of websites to work out what's what.

In a series of posts, you can read how we got on and where things are going next.

Issues surrounding multimedia are discussed in PART FOUR.

PART THREE looks at the editoral and user-generated content features being used by websites.

You can read PART TWO here which covers issues about access to the websites and navigation.

Or start at the beginning with PART ONE to look at the sample websites and the methodology.

PART FIVE

Income Generation

How media can create and maintain relevance to readers and then communicate that value to advertisers is a key question for consumer magazines as they tackle the online environment.

There are no easy solutions. Advertising can not generate like-for-like revenues with print when publishing costs are different and competition is so fierce. Equally, around 40% of ad spend online goes to search engines . In our study 50% of sites had ads powered by Google. Added to the mix is the fact that content is free and no one publishing house owns the platform – consumers can and will go anywhere they like.

Revenue from the web is dominated by advertising which accounts for 56% . Most comes in the form of display advertising which accounts for 30% of the total web revenue for publishers. In our study, the magazine sites mirrored this trend with 91% of sites using display advertising.

The race is now on to develop new and effective business models that can adapt to a consumer-centric digital environment.

Ad spending continues to shift online according to the Advertising Association’s Statistics Yearbook . Online was the strongest performer by medium, rising 40% in 2007 to just over £3bn and accounting for 16% of total UK ad spend last year. Estimates suggest that British and North American magazine publishers expect to generate as much as 20% of their total revenues from digital platforms within the next five years .

The proportion of websites attracting new online advertisers is also growing. In 2007, around eight out of ten sites had gained advertisers online who did not feature in print editions . Advertisers are increasingly switched on to a range of advantages: speed, low entry costs, advertising scope, audience size, continuous presence and measurability. The latest figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau and Pricewaterhouse Coopers show that the online advertising sector grew by 41.3% year-on-year to reach £1.33bn .

Working out how best to offer advertising to consumers, who are becoming increasingly savvy about ad avoidance – and who are expecting to receive ever more targeted and relevant advertising – is key. There are also more finely tuned opportunities for advertising which are moving in accordance with content delivery systems and feeds.

As such, The Preston Report evaluated online offerings based on where and how advertising was presented.

Comparison: Haymarket sites and
competitors on how advertising was presented

 




Sophisticated multimedia platforms are also opening up a wealth of new rich-media advertising avenues. Recent studies show strong loyalty for branded video content and evidence of a new ‘primetime’ for the web .

However, The Preston Report found that take-up of new opportunities is relatively slow. Only a handful of sites offered advertising with multimedia content: five sites had advertising within RSS feeds, six had advertising within email newsletters and two had advertising within podcasts.

The take-up of motion graphics on advertising has been strong, however. In all, 23 sites had animated advertising somewhere on the site. There are also a variety of different types of advertising that can be used, and The Preston Report evaluated the sites on the type of advertising that was in place.

Comparison: Haymarket sites and
competitors on all advertising features by type

 

Display advertising, where an advertiser pays a company for space to display a static or hyperlinked logo or banner, traditionally accounts for 80% of consumer magazine print advertising revenue.

In the online environment, display advertising was used by 30 sites.

Classified advertising, where advertisers pay to list specific products or services, traditionally accounts for 20% of consumer magazine advertising. In our study, we found 15 sites used classifieds.

Advertorials were used infrequently: on just six sites.

Relying on advertising alone is unlikely to be enough to support magazine publishing companies’ online viability. Selling and affiliate schemes are a way to build formal partnerships. Alternatively broker models such as those of iStockphoto or Threadless would allow a magazine organisation to leverage its profile, reach and technology to sell on behalf of willing readers.

The Preston Report found that eight sites had a brokerage service available.

Magazine website strategy - multimedia

IT IS difficult to imagine a period of more dramatic or rapid change for the magazine consumer publishing industry.

As publishing houses increasingly embrace the opportunities in the online community, organisations have to be ever more inventive in their attempts to create good content powered by a myriad of new delivery tools.

So, as part of my research with The Preston Report, UCLan and Haymarket, we set about looking at a key group of websites to work out what's what.

In a series of posts, you can read how we got on and where things are going next.

PART THREE looks at the editoral and user-generated content features being used by websites.

You can read PART TWO here which covers issues about access to the websites and navigation.

Or start at the beginning with PART ONE to look at the sample websites and the methodology.

PART FOUR

Multimedia

Multimedia content is increasingly being applied across
a range of media sites to engage with a tech-savvy audience. Content which is rich in not only text but also graphics, audio and video enhances the user experience and potential level of interaction.

Comparison: Haymarket sites and
competitors on all multimedia features

 

Magazine websites have been quick to look at the potential for extensive photo galleries, with 26 sites having this feature.

Online publishers' future may lie in delivering the story in multiple ways and, as such, video is being widely adopted by newspaper publishers online. The trend is mirrored with the magazine sites in this study, with substantially more sites offering video than simple slideshows.

This strategy allies with research that shows 52% of UK online TV viewers would be interested in watching TV and movies on their laptops on a regular basis . Also,
UK traffic to online video increased by 178% between February 2007 and 2008 with video accounting for one
in every 45 internet visits .

Some industry commentators believe live streaming is
an area for extensive development. Live streaming tools such as Qik, which allows users to upload video directly from mobile phones, are facilitating a level of communication which is instantaneous and media rich. YouTube has also reportedly hatched plans to go live . This could prove to be an interesting tool in the future
for magazines online.

Podcasts are an effective way to publish sound files to the internet allowing anyone to publish – and listen – to audio with a simple download to an iPod or MP3 player.
The number of consumers using podcasts is increasing with 18% of Americans having downloaded a podcast in 2008 compared to 13% in 2007  while RAJAR reports that 3.7m people say they listen to a podcast each week .

The Preston Report found that only 13 sites offered podcasts, which is behind the general trend in newspaper sites. Podcasts can be an effective way to reach new users. Audio content, which can be converted quickly with programmes such as Talkr.com, was only available on three sites.

Gaming - as a way of complementing editorial content
- is also an increasingly popular multimedia avenue being explored. While only five of the sites we studied offered games, this is another exciting area for magazines online to explore.

The Online Games 2006 Overview highlights that older users offer an interesting growth opportunity while the gaming industry online becomes increasingly fragmented . Philip Trippenbach among others has made interesting observations about possible applications for media organisations .

Magazine website strategy - editorial

IT IS difficult to imagine a period of more dramatic or rapid change for the magazine consumer publishing industry.

As publishing houses increasingly embrace the opportunities in the online community, organisations have to be ever more inventive in their attempts to create good content powered by a myriad of new delivery tools.

So, as part of my research with The Preston Report, UCLan and Haymarket, we set about looking at a key group of websites to work out what's what.

In a series of posts, you can read how we got on and where things are going next.

You can read PART TWO here which covers issues about access to the websites and navigation.

Or start at the beginning with PART ONE to look at the sample websites and the methodology.


PART THREE

Editorial

The online media environment has witnessed a dramatic fragmentation, facilitated by the existence of cheap and simple publishing tools. This means that content is the single most important factor relating to a site’s success. Content needs to be high in both quantity and quality.

The quantity of content is especially relevant in an environment free from pagination restrictions. Readers have come to expect archived posts, easily accessible data, content variety and a strong editorial voice.

Quantity of content not only attracts readers but also boosts SEO. Search engines have no power of interpretation but credit a site for offering extensive content.

The Preston Report carried out an analysis of the number of articles being offered by the sites on the homepage. These were divided into news, features and reviews.

Haymarket’s sites were largely consistent with the competitor average per sub-section. Hymarket offered more content within the autosport.com group but less with whatcar.com. Only T3.com and Cnet.co.uk offered links to feature articles from the home page within the stuff.tv sub section, while caravanclub.co.uk appeared to offer more content than caravansitefinder.com.
The Preston Report also evaluated sites based on content presentation.
Digital content is often presented differently from print to reflect how people read on screen, be that computer or mobile. A range of media studies have been carried out to determine online reading habits, whether with methodical or scanning readers , but the consensus is that copy should be effectively chunked and formatted to assist in ease of consumption.

Comparison: Haymarket sites and
competitors on all editorial features

We looked at the percentage of sites offering key editorial features. Only five sites offered charts or graphs to demonstrate content. Eight sites had price or product comparison tools in place. In all, 75% of sites had product reviews while almost all ordered content into themes.
Content should also reflect social media and its place as an important staple of global media consumption. The speed with which social media operates means engagement in conversation – and replying to comments – needs to happen ever faster. Comment sections encourage readers to visit a website on a more consistent and regular basis, helping to build the all-important concept of community.

The Preston Report carried out the following evaluation to assess the extent to which sites were encouraging user-generated content and conversation.

Comparison: Haymarket sites and
competitors on all user-generated
content features

In all, 16 sites allowed users to comment on stories and 15 allowed comments on blogs. However, increasing the opportunities for interaction could potentially help build community.

Two-way communication is relatively easy to achieve: public debates, wiki tools, forums, message boards and chat rooms. Forums provide an effective platform for users to initiate discussions with one another. And consumer voice can morph into community within minutes. The key is to be able to listen attentively enough to channel editorial interest into quality content – and potential commercial opportunity.

Forums, comment sections and chat rooms, social interactivity and feeds are all essential components of the average consumer’s weekly online existence – and are a distinct step towards the always-on, highly interactive, highly personalized next generation web imagined a decade ago.

The Preston Report found that two thirds of sites had a forum or message board.

Blogs play an important part, too. Today there are approximately 75 to 100 million blogs and 10 to 20 million internet discussion boards and forums  - a remarkable growth if you consider that there were only a handful of blogs operating before the new millennium. According to Burstein, they represent the raw, human face of the new technological world, capable of restoring real voice to the citizenry at large .

Blogger Colin Walker sees social media in terms of five key opportunities: to contribute, comment, collaborate, converse and create community  . And the opportunity has never been more transparent. UK internet visits to weblogs peaked in June 2008 with blogs and personal websites accounting for 1.19% of all UK traffic, equivalent to one in every 84 internet visits .

Blogs are an easy way for magazines to expand their opinion, commentary or niche content sections. They remove the formality of editorials and provide an opportunity to communicate more directly with the readership. A blog network encourages user participation and interaction.

Because of the growing popularity of blogs and live blogs – and increasingly moblogs and vblogs – they have the potential to form a key part of online strategy especially among a readership of younger adults who have come to expect interactivity. It can be argued that blogging is not a publishing process: it’s a community strategy .

The Preston Report carried out a brief assessment of the blogs and micro-blogs operating in the target subject areas of this study. These have been detailed in Appendix 3. While there appears to be little or no competition in the caravanning sector, there are several advanced offerings in the automotive and gadget fields.
The community being generated around blogs and micro-blogs can sometimes be harnessed via links and feeds, but may also be the place to research whispers.

And as blogs become ever more subtly disguised - and gain more and more editorial clout - they must be treated as real-time competition to larger publishing houses.

The level of editorial content is growing in depth every day. If blogs added a human face to the web, then micro feeds such as twitter and plurking add ever greater personality. However, The Preston Report found that only three sites had a micro-blogging platform in place. Introducing such a feed could be an effective way to update content and present content flexibility.

Publishers are also looking at opportunities to expand into social media. Reuters-funded pluck is one such start-up featuring blog syndication BlogBurst and social media integrator SiteLife.

Harnessing the power of community is pivotal to making any online offering a commercially viable and sustainable media product. Philip Trippenbach goes as far as describing newspapers as ‘a community website with articles as the objects people interact around’ .

The logic is simple: take the message to where people are as part of your web strategy and boost readership, profile, brand recognition and commercial viability.

Magazine website strategy - access

IT IS difficult to imagine a period of more dramatic or rapid change for the magazine consumer publishing industry.

As publishing houses increasingly embrace the opportunities in the online community, organisations have to be ever more inventive in their attempts to create good content powered by a myriad of new delivery tools.

So, as part of my research with The Preston Report, UCLan and Haymarket, I set about looking at a key group of websites to work out what's what.

In a series of posts, you can read how we got on and where things are going next.

You can read PART ONE  here which covers the sample sites and methodology.

PART TWO

This section is an overview of our findings about access. This included how people can navigate sites and how the content is being linked out, and republished by other people. We were attempting to flesh out if web 3.0 strategies were really coming alive: how much mileage the read, write and publish web was advancing for magazines.

ACCESS

Overview

How a website performs in terms of access and navigation is pivotal to its usability and success. Not
only do readers need to find what they want quickly and easily, but search engines also rank sites based on ease of consumption.

Comparison: Haymarket sites and
competitors on all access features

 

In terms of how readers access a site, The Preston Report analyzed several key areas. Our first focus was based on the presence or absence of general access features such as navigation bars and search tools, as well as registration requirements.

In total, 25 sites had more than one navigation bar, 29 offered a search tool on the home page and 31 offered all their content for free.

We also looked at how readers could control access to content themselves. RSS, or really simple syndication, is a web feed format that allows syndication of information found on the internet.

RSS feeds allow readers to condense information and have it delivered when and where they want it. This technology has dramatically empowered the consumer and the way content is accessed - as such it has been dubbed the ‘needstream’ .

We found that 24 sites offered RSS feeds of which nine offered RSS feeds for individual sections.

Widgets are self-contained pieces of code or mini web applications that stream live content, which can be moved into and out of websites very easily. They represent one of the highest levels of engagement between the user and the content provider.

We found that only two sites offered widgets. However, by taking existing online content, magazines could create successful applications that the online social community recognise and respond to, helping them become part of the social marketplace .

Feeds, in their varying formats, are increasingly being burned together with emerging technologies to provide ever more closely customised flows of content. Twitterfeed, Feedburner and Xfruits are popular examples.

We also found that 13 sites offered users the chance to subscribe to a sister publication on the website.

Comparison: Haymarket sites and
competitors on all navigation features

The sites were then analyzed on the basis of more advanced navigation. Increasingly sophisticated data-organising tools are being explored as a way of assisting navigation and access. Mash-ups (Googlemaps is one such example) and geotagging were not found to be present on any of the sites we looked at but could be used effectively in a range of contexts to present data.

We did find, however, that 12 sites offered a most-popular ranking tool. Only four sites used tags on
editorial content. Tags are key words that usually
appear at the bottom of content that assist in navigation and skim reading.

These features of access and navigation can assist with search engine optimisation. SEO works on complex and proprietary algorithms. Controllable factors in improving SEO include tags, page content, a website’s architecture and considering the ease with which a web spider can examine the site.

We also looked at the use of hyperlinking: a tool which acts not only as added navigation but also optimises SEO. Links help give a site structure which in turn helps search engines read how the internet has been tied together.

We found that 17 sites offered hyperlinking within editorial content.

Social bookmarking takes access to the next level and is often part of a web 3.0 strategy – when stories are ‘published’ for a second time by being delivered to a new location. A recent Hitwise report revealed that social bookmarking sites StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and Tagged featured in the Top 30 websites in May 2008 for social networking and forums ranked by visits .

Bookmarking sites make it easy for internet users to keep and share articles. Including bookmarking tools in a web strategy not only encourages the viral dissemination of information but also helps build credibility. The Preston Report classed a site as applying this strategy if any social bookmarking was available. We found that 17 sites in total offered social bookmarking.

All the sites appeared on the first page of a Google search when the key words of the title were inputted.