December 11, 2013

With the scoop that Manhattan magazine is cutting its printing schedule from weekly to biweekly, regional magazines are a number of the publications hit hardest by mobile, despite the increased interest around local advertising.

With mobile bringing in additional than half Web traffic for some publishers, the specter of mobile cannibalizing existent print subscribers to free-wielding digital readers is a threat that publishers are increasingly worried about. The big apple magazine is the newest publication to announce that it is cutting back on its print distribution which will pour more investments into digital and mobile. 

“We’re forecasting being up 15 percent on the subject of revenue in 2014 versus 2013, so we see strong continued digital growth in the case of both audience and revenue,” said Michael Silberman, general manager of online at The big apple magazine, Manhattan.

“We’re launching a brand new blog, we’re adding resources to our existing blogs and Websites, so we’re fully expecting to determine continued strong growth,” he said.

Regional moves
New York magazine’s push into digital is geared toward helping the magazine churn out more content and support ad revenue.

New York magazine will hire 15 people for editorial and sales roles.

The regional magazine may even launch a blog keen on the science of human behavior. Additionally, the volume of music and fashion content will ramp up.

New York magazine has a tablet magazine app and mobile templates for parts of its Site.

Currently, the homepage and the entire brand’s fashion content from The Cut is designed responsively to render the identical on any kind of device.

New York magazine’s fashion content

Additionally, each of the magazine’s listings for stores and restaurants are optimized for mobile since consumers are likely not accessing this kind of information from a computer.

In the primary half 2014, the magazine can even roll out responsive pages for other sections of the location, including the Daily Intelligencer news content and the Grub Street food section.

Interestingly though, the magazine has not found that mobile requires a wholly different set of content.

“When we glance at what content does well in mobile versus what does well for desktop, it’s most often the identical,” Mr. Silberman said.

“The one pattern that we’ve noticed is that once a narrative does really, rather well in getting traffic from social, especially Facebook or Twitter, that lots of that audience is available in via mobile,” he said. 

With Ny magazine reporting that 80 percent of its online traffic comes from outside the brand new York metropolitan area, the magazine’s digital focus is primarily skewed towards a countrywide audience and therefore attracts the notice of larger brands that still wish to reach New Yorkers in addition local advertisers.

Take Macy’s, for instance. Macy’s advertises in both Long island magazine’s print and digital content. Although the corporate has a countrywide footprint, the emblem is particularly interested by promoting its flagship store in Big apple.

On the opposite hand, Bergdorf Goodman advertises in The big apple magazine online to support its online business even if the retailer’s bricks-and-mortar presence is proscribed to Long island.

Depending at the brand’s objective though, the move to a countrywide-reaching Web audience could negatively impact some advertising interest from local marketers, in accordance with Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, Williamsburg, VA.

“The more highly localized you’re or are meant to be, the fewer valuable that national traffic is because your local advertisers don’t want it – they don’t want the national traffic [because] it doesn’t serve them well,” he said.

“But in a scenario where you could have nearly all of people like Ny magazine coming from outside the market, it dictates that you’re going to be more attractive to national advertisers, which generally play a lower CPM, and also you probably have to be charging more for a subscription when you have that broad of an audience.”

Publishers move to mobile
In addition to Big apple magazine, La Magazine and Chicago Magazine are two other examples of the way the various country’s largest regional magazines are increasingly moving towards mobile.

Similar to Big apple magazine, one of the most primary uses of mobile for these two publications is to serve local listing information for bars and restaurants. What’s different in regards to the two magazines is the point of interest on packing content into applications.

Both L. a. Magazine and Chicago Magazine have iPhone apps that aggregate restaurant and bar content in order that consumers can discover a recommended restaurant or bar while at the go. Both also are ad-supported through sponsorships from brands including Ketel One Vodka and Bailey’s.

Los Angeles Magazine’s Dining Out app

Where Chicago Magazine stands proud though is with the mobile Web since L. a. Magazine doesn’t have a mobile site.

Chicago Magazine has a whole mobile site it is ad-supported with banners and local ads within a stream of reports content. 

However, Chicago Magazine also is owned by Tribune Media Group, which incorporates a portfolio of publications including The Chicago Tribune, Cars.com and Apartments.com. 

The media company has a dedicated mobile advertising element of media plans featuring mobile inventory.

Banner ads and local ads on Chicago Magazine’s mobile site

Digital pitfalls
As more publishers move to digital to maintain with readers, there may be lots of speculation that print will eventually die.

However, the actuality is that magazines, particularly regional magazines with smaller circulations, still heavily place confidence in print to maintain their business afloat.

Additionally, publishers haven’t cracked the nut on what forms of advertising models work best on digital and mobile properties to earn money.

“I think it might be very difficult to function a neighborhood or regional magazine in digital-only – there’s just unlikely to be enough advertising to support the content,” Mr. Borrell said.

“However, there’s a model supported very heavily with print where you could have a simultaneous print and online and also you see a considerable number of newspapers doing that at once,” he said. “What we’re discovering is that the web model actually serves the print model a section more.”

“It is an extremely problematic business model to move digital-only. I don’t think within the short run there’s enough advertising support on mobile devices because the screen is way smaller, thus the advertising is mostly a bit more intimate, but there’s far less of it.” 

Part of the difficulty with traditional publishers making the switch to digital is that readers continue to beat back from procuring content online. It is particularly true on mobile devices where consumers are reading quick stories while at the go.

News Corp.’s launch of the subscription-based mobile-only publication The Daily in 2011 that was then shut down last year is an ideal example of ways consumers aren’t willing enough to pay high subscription rates for digital-only premium content (see story). 

According to Mr. Borrell, newspapers receive ten times more revenue per print subscriber than a digital subscriber.

Therefore, it’s possible that more regional magazines may move to online and mobile pay walls that newspaper publishers akin to the hot York Times and Wall Street Journal had been fairly successful with in controlling the quantity of digital content that customers can access.

The key for publishers with digital is to determine precisely how readers consume content on digital devices after which tailor editorial articles and ads to compare those intentions.

“I suspect that in the event that they can prove a deeper bond with their local market consumer, and so they have the info to deliver to these consumers, then they might shift to a digital-only distribution in time,” said Susan Bidel, senior analyst at Forrester Research, Cambridge, MA.

On the advertising side, larger magazines with niche content are likely to attract big brand advertisers, meaning that they are able to charge more. All these national advertisers are more fascinated by using advertising for branding than pushing a tough sell.

However, on the local level there’s a greater demand for direct response advertising since local advertisers cannot afford to do lots of branding.

This means that mobile advertising is probably not working to boot at a native level that publishers and marketers believe it’s.

Additionally, the character of the content that regional magazines produce is probably not particularly attractive to advertisers.

For example, regional and native magazines are likely to deal with lifestyle content whereas big publishers concentrate on content that’s targeted in consumers who’re actively researching products before they buy something.

The exception to here’s Consumer Reports magazine for the reason that publication’s demographic is primarily made from consumers searching for information to assist buy something.

“In Chicago magazine or Big apple magazine or any of those other magazines which are regional or local – [the readers are] just seeking to get some entertainment information, discover what’s happening around time, they might or will not be predisposed to going out to eat or see a play or something like that,” Mr. Borrell said.

“So it doesn’t hold as great of value as a majority of these other categories where individuals are actually — just like the YellowPages  — dealing with an app and researching something or looking up something before they buy,” he said. “That is the best value content.”

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York