The digital door is wide open—Anyone ready to walk in?
So this week we had another player enter the digital media world, WIRED. How did they do in this humble marketer’s opinion? I give it a two out of five stars. It is an okay start, but honestly coming from a leader in the geek world I truly expected more from WIRED.
They did nail down the rich media content, but the delivery of the content was still laced with the feel of print and not the feel of digital freedom. The ads are nothing more then copies from the print addition and lack zero capabilities of tracking success or impact. The navigation of content is basic and lacks natural user interaction. All and all the app is not worth the $4.99 price tag. I hope it is a first step for WIRED and they look to strip away the print limitations and change the price point delivery system. Only time will tell.
So what makes a good digital magazine and why am I so hard on all these guys? I will answer the latter question first. I expect more from companies that have budgets that are deep, brand penetration and have openly announced they have been planning these apps for the past year. Spending upwards of $100,000 just to produce one issue and 10 to 20 people working on each issue. Then in the end we get glorified PDF’s or an untraditional digital experience. I get just a bit frustrated, but again it leaves the door wide open for the little guy.
With that said now I will give the three keys needed to making digital media content successful. I won’t give away all the ‘how to’s’, but I will outline the basics.
Rich Media Content: This seems to be the obvious and simplest of the tasks. Creating content and rich media content should be a no brainer, a 1, 2, 3, type of deal for these companies. Sadly it just is not the case. For years publishers have mastered the art of ‘less is more’ and working in the realms of print restrictions. Now we are telling them to abandoned what they have thought, trained and done for centuries. This process is more of a culture change then anything else. It will take time, but it is key to the success of digital media. ( more to come on what exactly Rich Media content really is, in a future blog )
Track-ability of User Interaction: One of the greatest advantages to going digital is the ability to track not only the ads, but the content as well. Now publishers can rely on more than just letters and casual conversations about their content’s success, they can get hard cold facts. What do readers like? What don’t they like? Was the cover story the right story? What content was the most popular, what content was interacted with the most? All of these can now be answered. Advertisers can now track their print ads much like they do for online ads. Ad delivery becomes a whole new ball game and everyone benefits, the users, the publishers and the advertisers.
Social Integration: What are we as a society if we don’t share? We are nothing and the same fate befalls digital media. It is truly worthless if you can’t share it. We have to remember that not EVERYONE owns a tablet or a portable media device…but odds are they have access to some type of internet connection. This means that if I am reading the latest digital news story I can quickly share it to my social community. In turn they can share it to theirs and so on. Now the digital content is no longer ‘just’ on my device, but it has spread to thousands and do this enough times with the right content and users will pony up and get into the portable media revolution. As a note this does not mean that ALL content needs to be shared in an open platform. There are many ways to protect the publishers content and still share the experience.
Now these are just the building blocks. Of-course there are other issues to address such as; Pricing, UI design, Flow, Gesture control, Speed and Delivery. The three keys above are what is minimally required to truly compete in the digital media market place.
If you are interested here are the links to the ‘top’ digital magazines out right now:
WIRED ( 2 out of 5 stars )
TIME ( 2.5 out of 5 stars )
MEN’S HEALTH ( 3 out of 5 stars ) – there are a few bugs in the app, but those will be fixed. Â As for content and user experience they have the most—so far.
POPULAR SCIENCE ( 2 out of 5 stars )
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I find it interesting out of most of the people using the iPad digital format for their magazine that Wired brought in a lot more rich media content then most of what’s available. Everything else is basically a PDF. You made mention of the ads being just print ads made digital. I wonder if that would be Wired’s responsibility or the advertisers?
I think the thing that bothers me the most about all these magazine is that they haven’t come up with a subscription plan. I don’t want to have to pay more than I would for print or pay about the same. Sure some are cheaper but again all I get is a PDF or an experience that leaves me wondering can I click this or is there something more to this page?
Good tips by the way.