• 9 09.08.09

    Those digi-page-flipping-magazine things

    David Loewy

    digi_blog

    Recently a client asked us for our opinion on a Digimag (or whatever-you-call-it) service called Ceros. I’ve seen this technology grow in popularity over the years, and I have to admit Ceros has taken it to a higher plane. Their product and experience is rich with video, animation and interactivity – but so what.

    I can see how print publishers would really love for this page-flipping technology to take off. Their print advertising windows are closing quickly, yet their online advertising windows are not opening fast enough. With Digimags, they are offering an online add-on, attempting to close the deal with the advertiser on that expensive print inside cover or center spread.  In my opinion, this is just another way of putting off the inevitable transition from print to true online publishing – publishing that is centered around knowledge exchange, content that takes place on a variety of platforms and advertising programs based on audience relevance and brand engagement.

    Furthermore, is there really a mass audience for Digimags? Nxtbook Media, another digital magazine service, has an interesting real-time map illustrating how often Digimags are read across the globe.  While this is a cool use of Google’s API, showing a reader or two per second – this map is an insult to a publisher’s intelligence.  According to their site, 1.3 million people read a Digimag per month.  That sounds like a lot – but it pales in comparison to the number of people who read online magazines every day.

    Digimags are not the panacea for publishers’ woes.  They sacrifice the standards and best practices of web publishing. The content has poor search visibility; there is no room for user-generated content; you need to click and enlarge to read; and you have to drag your electronic paper around to navigate.  Perhaps their future is better suited to a different device, such as the Kindle, as stated in this article.

    Finally, producing an issue of a Digimag can cost as much as $100 per page.  Why not put that towards building a sustainable online magazine for your audience and your advertisers?

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Comments

  • Paul Cimino 09/08/2009

    Very cool stuff.

    This technology has been used in online catalogs for years. Earlier this decade when I was at RichFx, which was bought recently by Channel Advisors (http://www.channeladvisor.com/richmedia/), we created a paper to web catalog platform that had hooks to take the most popular publishing platforms directly into flash.

  • Robin Perez 09/08/2009

    I agree with David. I see the Digimag thing mostly as a gimmick useful to charge clients more using the Wow factor, while providing a less valuable tool and wasting time and resources that could be used in improving other areas.

  • Mike Azzara 09/08/2009

    I’ve been railing against digital magazine’s as bizarre, ill-conceived concoctions not worth the imaginary paper they’re printed on ever since I first ran into them. I’m so glad that someone with actual influence is taking up the mantle! Go David!

  • Paul Cimino 09/08/2009

    Don’t you just love that line between design aesthetics and commerce. Given your point that some/most of this stuff is ugly, why do you think it has spread?

  • David Loewy 09/08/2009

    I feel this has only spread within its own bubble between publishers and their advertisers. It has not been embraced by online users. Print publishers are subscribing to Digimags because they are having a hard time evolving their businesses. What made them rich doesn’t work anymore…so it appears to be spreading.

  • Marcus 09/09/2009

    Thanks for the post on digital magazines and for pointing out the Nxtbook Map. I think you raise some very valid points about the digital magazine industry, most of which have been raised by website proponents before.

    More than anything, a publisher shouldn’t think of their business needing either a website OR a digital magazine. They serve different purposes.

    Virtually across the board, our publishers’ websites have more visitors than their digital magazines. However, the engagement times and click-through rates of their digital magazine is dramatically greater. As the battle for reader attention has never been greater, this creates a powerful reason for the medium to exist.

    You say that they “sacrifice the standards” of web publishing, but a digital magazine isn’t a website, anymore than a mobile app is. Apples and oranges, imo.

    You also say that the content has “poor search visibility,” but that’s entirely dependent on which digital magazine product is being used. I’ve seen many websites with woeful SEO but wouldn’t stoop to say that means the entire category fails. It just means the technology (or person) behind that one website failed.

    RE: no room for user generated content. By and large, I agree. However, most of our publishers already have robust forums and are more interested in readers being able to post page-specific links to the digital magazine in them. (A simple search of nxtbook.com at BoardReader or a similar service will show you how this is being done.)

    RE: Layout and click-to-zoom, I’d say two things. First, there’s an increasing trend in designing digital-only magazines. These products don’t require zooming, yet maintain the high engagement times and click-through rates enjoyed by the industry. Ceros does many projects like this. So do we.

    Second, publishers are able to get these benefits using the same PDF provided to the printer. In a world where we’re all trying to do more with less, repurposing content has an inherent value.

    As far as whether or not the map insults anyone’s intelligence, it’s hard to say. We built it because we wanted to and like the way it looks. Soon after, a successful publisher approached me at a tradeshow and said it was the coolest thing we ever did. If we measure intelligence via readership and revenue (online and otherwise), I’d say the guy was pretty smart.

  • David Loewy 09/09/2009

    Thanks for your opinions Marcus, I really appreciate your POV. I can see your point that the website and digital magazines can coexist. My focus here is with the rapid decline of ad revenues publishers need to invest their limited dollars in strategies that are going to save their businesses.

  • amir chitayat 10/27/2009

    At OpenMoves we call this technology OpenPages and we provide it to our clients mainly as an improvement over sharing a PDF document. Many of our email clients send a reader to a page where they need to download a PDF brochure or catalog as the client doesn’t have an online version. So we convert the PDF to OpenPages and add some links and branding and they have an online brochure. In many cases this medium works better than PDF and adds a “cool” factor that readers like to engage with. We only charge $15/page so its very economical and we offer it as a complementary service to our email services. If you want to see some examples you can at http://www.openmoves.com/what-we-do.html#pdf

  • Lorin Horosz 11/12/2009

    I think you’ll find that that there are better digital publishing tools available that address many of your valid concerns. Have a look at http://www.issuu.com . Their pro service is less than $20 a month.

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