Digital publishing news for August 7, 2013
The New York Times has a new report on magazine subscription and newsstand sales. Christine Haughney writing for The Times reports, “Magazines continued to struggle with sales of subscriptions and newsstand copies in the first half of 2013, but they made inroads in selling digital editions, according to data released on Tuesday.” Women’s magazines and celebrity weeklies were the hit the hardest as they try to compete with online outlets.
Haughney reports, “The numbers, released by the Alliance for Audited Media, also showed that a solid base of loyal magazine readers were simply turning to the digital versions of magazines. Digital replica editions — which replicate the format of the print editions — now make up 3.3 percent of total magazine circulation, with 10.2 million digital replica editions sold in the first half of 2013. During the same time period in 2012, magazines sold 5.4 million digital editions, which made up 1.7 percent of circulation.”
Online Adults are Social
According to a new survey performed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project 72% of online adults use social networks. From the survey overview,”72% of online adults use social networking sites. Although younger adults continue to be the most likely social media users, one of the more striking stories about the social networking population has been the growth among older internet users in recent years. Those ages 65 and older have roughly tripled their presence on social networking sites in the last four years—from 13% in the spring of 2009 to 43% now.”
One of the interesting survey findings was, “the percentage of internet users who are on Twitter has more than doubled since November 2010, currently standing at 18%. Internet users ages 18-29 are the most likely to use Twitter.”
Bob Carrigan Steps Down as CEO of IDG Communications Worldwide
FOLIO Magazine reports that Bob Carrigan will be stepping down as CEO of IDG Communications. Bill Mickey writes, “IDG Enterprise CEO Michael Friedenberg has been named CEO of IDG Communications U.S. Now in addition to leading the b-to-b media brands, Friedenberg will also oversee the consumer, SMB and TechNetwork groups.”
Carrigan talks about his decision to step down, saying “IDG is in a really strong position, we have a lot of talented leaders throughout the company. After essentially 20 years in two 10-year stints, I decided it was the right time to transition. My family lives in the New York area and I’ve been doing a lot of commuting back and forth, plus international travel, and honestly that weighed in the decision as well.”
Magazines Connect with the Affluent
Luxury Daily has the details on a new report from the Shullman Research Center titled “Generational Differences in Luxury Consumers’ Use of and Engagement with Media Platforms.” Erin Shea for Luxury Daily writes that, “magazines rank as the No. 1 platform for advertisers to engage with affluent consumers of all ages.”
Shea also writes, “while magazines are useful for engaging with most affluent consumers, affluent millennials engage more with ads on smartphones and affluent baby boomers engage more with ads in newspapers. Luxury brands should keep in mind how their target audience consumes media when designing campaigns.”
Writing about ultra-affluent Gen X’ers, “magazines ranked No. 1 in both reach and engagement, with 76 percent of this group seeing these ads in the last 30 days and 69 percent being interested in them.”
Google Gets In-Depth
Greg Sterling, Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land has a new post on how Google will be highlighting long form content in search results.
Sterling writes, “Google suggests that the new block will appear most often for broad topics and themes. In-depth articles will not appear for every query, however. It’s not yet clear whether all publishers and sites will have equal access to this area via structured content markup or whether there’s some sort of internal white list of approved publishers.” Sterling adds further details of the positioning of long form content highlighting in search results, saying “Google has confirmed the block will appear in the center of the page.”
We’ve been saying it for some time, but if there was any more reason to add meat to your articles now, this is it. Google is clearly rewarding better, longer, more in-depth content.
