Moderator, Robert Andrews, Senior Editor, International, paidContent/GigaOM
Nick Bogaty, Director of Busines Development, Digital Publishing Group, Adobe Systems: Started software project with Wired three years ago. Great initial excitement when iPad come out. But now are at the point of growing real businesses with real content, real advertising and real subscribers. Provide software creation tools but also act as a distributor. Now distribute 120,000 publications a day and last year served 26 million publications. Shows that the business is real. Producing the Wired magazines was a total collaborative experience. Actually slept at Wired to see how they put out the magazine. Now past the challenge of getting designers to put print into digital. Their metrics show that when there is interactive stuff in magazines the consumers will, indeed, interact with it. Have driven down the costs so much that there is no reason just to do just replicas. Biggest challenge is to make the publishers platform attractive to advertisers.
Liz Schimel, EVP and Chief Digital Officer, Meredith National Media Group: Five years ago had nothing in digital area. Digital subscribers growing at a rapid rate even though it if fairly small given their massive subscription base. The penetration of devices is past the early adopters and now into mainstream – their audience is the women of america. Young moms looking to theri digital devices. We are in the classic syndrome of an early market – get very excited and then sour on it and then get excited again. So far digital is a huge success – they are finding high levels of time spent and engagement with the product. Devices married with content delivers a very different experience from the open web. But web is important as it is the gateway to their brands. Interactive or not is not an “either/or’. Each magazines will be different depending on its content. There is no turnkey solution to produce this stuff yet and there is still a lot of pain in doing digital versions. Have been approached by a lot of companies to do stuff on their devices and have to decide whether it is work the effort. HP came to them and they turned them down. Liked the Kindle Fire and expected it to have a large uptake by young women. Biggest challenge is to change from a customer acquisition company to a customer engagement company.
Jonathan Shar, GM, Digital Newsstand and Emerging Content, Barnes & Noble: There is demand for digital content and people are willing to pay for this content. Portability is important, as is how it is delivered. The consumer content has to be married with the value added experience from the distributor. Are just scratching the surface of this now. We are “getting there” with the consumer experience. Next biggest challenge is discoverability. How do you take every individual article in a magazine, for example, and make it discoverable. Once take discoverability to the next level it will take audiences to the next level. PDF allows you to get to multiple places very easily. Consumers are starting to ask for content that is tailored to the device they are using. Want the benefits and ease of a PDF along with customizable format. Will be collaborating with Microsoft and Windows 8. Biggest challenge on the roadmap is staying disciplined because there are so many opportunities out there.
