It was a sort-of homecoming as I walked through the doors on Monday morning to start my first day as Marketing Director of the PPA. I’ve been involved with various PPA committees over the years, working on great campaigns such as Magazines Uncovered in my time as a publisher member and, although I’ll be ‘on the inside’ in my new role, there’s a comforting sense of continuity in the remit to champion the medium of magazines.
Print today remains as powerful a tool as ever at creating real engagement with readers and, particularly for the consumer magazine publishers on the PPA Marketing Board, it is still the 'engine room' of revenue generation.
But that’s where the familiarity ends. The world of magazines – or, if you prefer, magazine brands or even magazine media – continues to change at a pace: 2011 doesn’t much look like 2010 or even pre-iPad 2009, let alone the pre-internet 1990s. Technology has accelerated the adoption of new routes to market for content owners, complete with new revenue streams and even new business models, to create a more fluid and dynamic world.
The success of the iPad and the promise of the still-emerging tablet market are obvious examples. The platform has given publishers the potential to evolve the printed pages of a magazine into more interactive digital editions, many of which have found success in the App Store. Moving outside the ‘traditional’ editorial page, publishers have also used the tablet format to turn their data assets into brand extension apps that play to the strengths of digital delivery.
This week’s exciting announcement regarding the introduction of Amazon’s Android-based Kindle Fire tablet shows just how quickly this world can change. At $199 - no UK pricing available at the time of writing this article – the Kindle Fire has the potential to open up a swathe of more ‘casual’ tablet users that weren’t ready to commit to the iPad but are eager to consume digital content from the magazine brands they trust.
Further to apps, publishers are also intently following the potential for HTML5 to create content-rich mobile sites and stretching their audience reach through social media channels, predominantly on Facebook and Twitter. These are all developments that underscore the inherently fast-changing nature of today’s publishing sector; all developments that would have been difficult to predict in the not-too-distant past.
As this multi-platform world evolves, the strengths of the various components – and how they complement each other - will become increasingly apparent. The well-established qualities of printed magazines will continue to prove a stand-out environment for readers and a hospitable environment for advertisers. As part of the media mix, they remain a trusted place for audiences to engage with expertly-curated editorial content and the highest quality imagery.
Innovative technologies are also beginning to explore how the high-quality engagement created by print can complement the immediacy and interactivity offered by digital. QR codes and digital watermarking, such as that used in the recent edition of FHM Collections, provide glimpses into the potential for such print/digital crossover.
The PPA’s Publishing Futures survey indicated that media owners will continue to explore the multi-platform nature of their magazine brands. Cross-media advertising packages across publishers' existing assets are forecast to boost revenues from digital ad sales, sponsorship and e-commerce, with PPA members expecting the overall contribution to revenue from these areas to grow by 48 per cent in two years to form an average of 22.2 per cent of overall revenues by 2012.
As mentioned earlier, however, forecasts and predictions amid such change must carry a caveat. Nobody knows exactly what this sector's future will look like and, familiar though it might sound, magazines remain the constant at its core.
