So that was 2011: a landmark year for the media, and one that saw customer publishing agencies continue to go from strength to strength in both established formats such as print and newer digital platforms like apps. What then is likely to happen 2012? Here are five key trends that we think you should be keeping an eye on:
1. Digital magazines will evolve and extend beyond apps and PDFs
For much of 2011, one of the key questions for mainstream publishers was how to shoehorn their existing titles into app-based magazines for the iPad. However, there are now signs that publishers are thinking beyond the iPad. In 2011, the Financial Times made a bold move in unveiling a HTML5 app that enables users to have access to a magazine-like format on their tablet, without having to go through the Apple app store to download it. In 2012 there is likely to be more use of HTML5 in this way as publishers seek to create magazine style content that works across many platforms, including Android, rather than just focusing on the iPad.
2. Brands will be focusing more on content than on apps
The last few years have seen the emphasis on brands building apps to engage with users via smartphones. There are still many superb branded apps being launched, and the cost of producing them has fallen dramatically. However, many brands appear to be realising that for day to day engagement with consumers they can't beat content: a beautifully crafted website or print publication is the perfect vehicle for attracting and keeping customers. This is reflected in a buoyant customer publishing industry in both the UK and US, the success of existing titles and the number of new agencies with branded content creation at their heart.
3. Old fashioned editorial values are back in vogue
For many years, there has been an emphasis on creating SEO-friendly content to attract users. This sometimes means that keywords in the title are often more important that the text of the story. However, this changed in 2011 with the Google Panda update: the latest tweak of the search engine's web data rating system. This worked to prioritise websites that have their own content at the expense of those which simply report on other people’s words. This has lead to many publishers once again focusing on creating bespoke quality content.
Perhaps even more importantly, the best websites are now judged a lot more on the quality of the content they deliver rather than their searchable keywords. Ultimately, if you are producing great content, then the chances are your site will have more followers on Twitter and more ‘Likes' on Facebook, and these days, social media is becoming just as important in terms of delivering traffic as search engines.
4. Print is not dead
Printed paper magazines are still at the heart of the customer publishing industry in the UK, and if 2011 is anything to go by, that situation isn't going to change any time soon. There have been many new branded print titles launched in both this country and the US, demonstrating that print is still seen by brands as a core component of their marketing armoury.
There are signs too that print is making a comeback in the mainstream market. US launches of print magazines was up for the first time in five years in 2011, and in Europe, print has undergone a sort of mini renaissance. Perhaps this is a reaction to digital content, which in some ways is analogous to the way in which the widespread acceptance of MP3s has, rather bizarrely, been the hand-maiden for a vinyl revival.
5. This might be the year of the Kindle
Up until fairly recently, most people's experience of reading content on the Amazon Kindle has been undermined by its low resolution, monochrome screen. This has started to change as a growing number of people now consume the content on Kindle apps on coloured screen devices like the iPhone and iPad. The big change, however, for magazine content producers in 2012 is the arrival in the UK of the Amazon Kindle Fire. It is a 7inch tablet which has much of the functionality of its rivals – the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. However, the key difference is that it is optimised for consuming Amazon delivered content and will retail at almost half the price of the cheapest iPad.
If the Kindle Fire is a huge success, it presents a massive opportunity for publishers. Not only is it a superb way of delivering magazines, it arguably offers a better way of monetising them than its rivals. Whereas users have come to expect apps to be free on the iPhone and iPad, almost all Kindle optimised content has some sort of price tag. Put simply, if people get used to using the Kindle to view paid-for content from mainstream publishers, the device will then offer huge possibilities to customer publishing agencies.
