The Next Generation of Digital Magazines

Think back to your first cell phone. If it was clunky, boxy, unlikely to fit in your pocket and even less likely to provide a clear and drop-free phone call, you weren’t alone in your frustrations. Cell phones have come a long way since appearing on “Saved by the Bell” (thanks to Zack Morris) and in vehicles as “car phones.” Today, it’s laughable to think how far the technology has evolved in just 15 years. Think now about how the next generation of magazine publishers and readers likely will view the print-replica digital editions that slowly have gained popularity over the last few years. If shrunken sizes and improved call quality are what fostered the widespread adoption of cell phones, then interactivity and experimentation could be the magic potion for digital magazines. Enter Popular Science, the venerable, 137-year-old science and technology title, whose willingness to “test the future of digital publishing—digital magazines,” as Publisher Gregg Hano describes the effort, should be applauded by those publishers currently seated on the sidelines. Launched in March, the PopSci Genius Guide is a fully interactive, quarterly digital magazine employing Zinio’s digital technology and loaded with original content and multimedia features that readers won’t find in print or at PopSci.com. While most digital editions are merely electronic copies of their printed versions, the Genius Guide is an editorial and technological product designed for on-screen use and with reader engagement and interaction as its primary purpose. Embedded videos, sound, animation and rich media files throughout the entire magazine make the articles and advertisements spring to life and pull the reader into a whole new world. And make no mistake—this isn’t your typical “interactive” digital magazine with an animation here or a video there. Rather, the Genius Guide is loaded with so much interactive content that it’s easy to navigate the magazine and miss some of it. “PopSci has effectively demonstrated the ability to create a multilayered, interactive experience for readers without overwhelming them,” says Jeanniey Mullen, global executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Zinio. “Readers choose which aspects they want to activate and when.” “The day is fast approaching when fully enhanced and optimized digital magazines will be demanded by consumers on devices from iPhones to handheld digital readers to computer screens to television screens in one’s living room,” says Hano. And Popular Science is betting that day is near. When Hano and Editorial Director Mark Jannot presented the idea for the Genius Guide to Terry Snow, CEO of Popular Science parent Bonnier Corp., Hano says his boss “was 110-percent behind what we wanted to do … to try to test the future of digital publishing.” But if the green light from the CEO was an easy sell, getting advertisers and readers on board has been a bit more trying. In fact, the premiere issue featured no advertising, primarily because the sales team was selling the product before a mock-up had even been created. The second issue touted just three advertisers: GE, Samsung and Sears Craftsman. Hano says that pages in the Genius Guide are being sold as part of a package across the rest of the PopSci Media Group, but that the challenge now is to educate advertisers on the possibilities—creative- and measurement-wise—of the new platform. Mullen calls the technology a “huge advancement” for advertisers. “Dynamic pages mean more time spent engaging with and reading an article,” she says. “When your full-page ad is sitting right next to that, time spent on your ad more than triples. And, by default, all URLs are made hot, which increases the traffic to the advertisers’ Web site, the branding experience and, hopefully, sales.” Readers—at least of the paid variety—have been a little slow on the uptake, too. The first Genius Guide, with its introductory price of $0.99, didn’t sell particularly well, concedes Hano. “The challenge is that we are attempting to sell a product that nobody knows or understands, and so we [had some conversations] with Zinio, and decided that we really needed to induce a trial, and to get people engaged and build some demand.” So the second issue, “The Green Home Guide,” is being offered for free at PopSci.com, on Zinio’s digital newsstand and through various partnerships. “We are offering it to friends of the magazine in exchange for e-mail addresses, and then we’re going to be sending it out to those people who bought the first issue. We’re going to be distributing it through our e-mail news blasts; we’re going to be sending it out to NRDC [Natural Resource Defense Council] members, Boy Scouts. … There’s a whole series of different groups that are going to be offered [the Genius Guide] for free for a trial.” Hano says he really does believe readers will recognize how “different [the Genius Guide is] from what digital magazines have been in the past—with the total interactivity, the depth of content, the video, the audio, everything—so we want to expose it to a core group of people [for free] to see if they embrace it and, if they do, the next important question is ‘will they buy it?’” The final two 2009 installments of the Genius Guide will be an automotive issue this fall and a year-end gear and gadgets issue. Hano says that despite all of the testing, experimentation and mixed results in the new title’s infancy, the Genius Guide is here to stay—as a pioneer of the new digital magazine frontier, one that other publishers will surely be watching closely. “Our goal was not to create a Web site with [the Genius Guide], and not to re-create Popular Science magazine with it,” says Hano, “but to create a totally new product and try to build a new field, if you will, that is enhanced digital magazines … that are packaged, that are curated, that have a beginning, middle and an end, and that are fully interactive and engaging.” Mullen agrees: “The Genius Guide … paves the way for other publishers to step out of a digital replica mold and move into a dynamic and integrated design that engages and enthralls the reader.”

General

The Next Generation of Digital Magazines

Matt Steinmetz

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Matt Steinmetz