magazines - cyberpop!

mobile appverts

April 3, 2010 By sem 3 Comments

Brands developing their own apps to cash in on mobile web use upswing

According to market research conducted in December 2009 by DM2PRO and Quattro Wireless, more than 65% of marketers and publishers are currently involved in designing their own branded apps–either in house or via 3rd party developers. Whether for a smartphone or the iPad platform, most brands are buying-in to the idea of their own custom app. The result? it’s “gold rush time” for mobile web developers.

This app explosion is connected to skyrocketing mobile web use—up 110% last year. A new European study showed that users are spending more time on the web via their handhelds (average 6.4 hours) than they do reading newspapers (4.8 hours) or magazines (4.1 hours)—all the more reason that publishers are in hot pursuit of cross-platform solutions (see stories on MensHealth, Sports Illustrated, Wired, and Viv iPad versions).

One of the companies consistently out in front on the digital frontier is Starbucks, whose mobile app is designed to improve customer experience at point-of-purchase (including by allowing mobile purchases—transform your iPhone into a swipeable Starbucks card, though not yet in Canada). But Starbucks approaches marketing (including mobile) from the perspective of “building meaningful relationships“—so it’s no surprise that they are also involved with Foursquare geo-loco social gaming, to allow coffee drinkers to engage with friends via competing for the new Barista badge. A host of other companies are following suit—using the Foursquare service as a readymade mobile marketing tool, powered by brand ambassadors and linked into loyalty programs.

For branded mobile appverts to become best-loved and often-used essentials (rather than neglected downloads), they have to tap into the power of social computing—in other words, brands have to help us be better friends—communicating and connecting with our social graph via branded content. In our “brand new world,” the digital marketing that consumers love is customizable, allows for two-way interactivity, and offers personal value—in other words it must help people fulfill their social needs, including most importantly, friendship.

Those social mobile apps that deliver both relevant content and mutual benefit to brands and consumers are the ones most likely to endure—those are two of the key elements behind what author Kevin A. Clark calls brandscendence.

Filed Under: advertising, mobile Tagged With: apps, BlackBerry, branding, cellphone, ecommerce, FourSquare, geolocation, GPS, handheld, iPhone, magazines, marketing, mobile, smartphone, social media, social networks

infovores ♥ e-prezzies

December 21, 2009 By sidneyeve 2 Comments

cybershopping: last minute digital e-reading gifts

A new longitudinal study from University of California, San Diego measured how much information people use daily. Turns out since 1980 the trends in information consumption are continuously (and unsurprisingly) upward. Today the average person in North America consumes 350% MORE digital information that their predecessor in the golden age of mullets and legwarmers.

University researchers found that today it’s likely you’ll use a whopping 34GB of data and consume 100,000 words of information.

Since we’re becoming a culture of data gluttons, hungrily snacking on bytes for business and pleasure, it would make sense that words as presents would be the perfect last-minute holiday gifts. Here are three ideas for someone on your list, or for the infovore in you.

1. e-comics: superheroes go digital

Iron Man, Spider Man, Fantastic Four, the Hulk! A one year subscription to Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited buys you access to 5,000 titles including digital-exclusives and hard-to-find classic comics on the web in full color graphic splendor. Price: $60 USD. Find them at marvel.com/digitalcomics

2. e-news: VIP access to breaking business and financial information

As the next gen of paywalls go up, newspapers start to charge for their premium content. A one-year subscription to The Wall Street Journal will put the daily paper, plus breaking news on your computer and smartphone. With a subscription users get insider reports, detailed financial market news, and expanded coverage. Price $100 USD. Find it at wsj.com

3. e-magazines: glossies from the digital newsstand

As advertising for glossy monthly magazines dries up, publishers move to the web for digital distribution solutions and Conde nast is out in front. Digital men’s lifestyle and fashion titles including Esquire and GQ are now available for the iPhone as apps. Perfect as e-stocking stuffers, each special issue comes with some extra content not available in print. Price $2.99 USD each issue. Find them at iTunes App store.

Filed Under: magazines Tagged With: app, apps, comics, infovores, magazines, mobile, news, newspaper, paywalls

infodensity in art/ads

April 11, 2009 By sidneyeve Leave a Comment

3D and AR imaging technology tools for cultural creatives.

This year Disney/Pixar and Intel/DreamWorks’ Super Bowl 3D spots for Monsters vs. Aliens and Up (and PepsiCo’s SoBe Lifewater) received considerable media buzz and ushered in the third wave of 3D (following trends in the 1950s and 80s). This time around, 3D visual FX are less gimmicky and more spectacular than ever, courtesy of digitalization.

Currently several A-list auteurs and major studios have 3D pictures in production, including Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson (Tintin trilogy), Pixar (Toy Stories 1 & 2), and James Cameron (Avatar). Unlike in earlier eras, theatregoers don’t have to wear 3D glasses, as advances in digital projection methods automatically separate the left and right images on a single projector.

The idea behind developing 3D pictures is twofold, part economic imperative and part artistic innovation. New projection technologies might work to reverse downward trends in theatre box office. For filmmakers, 3D imagery moves spectatorship one step closer to an immersive experience, breaking down the 4th wall separating audience from screen.

Outside Hollywood, graphic artists working inside and outside the lines of advertising are picking up high-tech tools of augmented reality to create multi-dimensioned informational and image layers, accenting and supplementing everyday objects, surfaces and spaces with an extra layer of infodensity.

BMW’s mixed-media AR advert for the new Z4 combines live action film with 3D computer graphics–which gives the effect that a stunt driver is using the sportscar as a paintbrush as it drifts and donuts across a white mega-canvas, leaving a neo-futurist masterpiece of colorful swirls and arcs behind. Another noteworthy AR automaker campaign was recently run at MINI (watch the “making of” video here).

From a different perspective on AR development, over at SnapTell, image recognition technology is used to driver eyeballs, by matching photos snapped with camera phones to advertisers’ websites. A 2D image from print or outdoor advertising can be converted to a personalized mobile marketing moment, if the viewer is armed with a smartphone. A collection of magazines from Martha Stewart Weddings, GQ, Wired, Men’s Health, Us Weekly, and Rolling Stone have used SnapTell technology campaigns, enabling readers to take a picture of select ads within the issues, and then be directed to contests, additional product information, exclusive downloads, store locations, and special offers online. This extra layer of advertising on-demand effectively links the offline magazine media to the world of online and mobile advertising (for more on the OFF=ON trends, visit trendwatching.com). (Thanks for letting me know about SnapTell Randy Matheson, Interactive Developer, Graphic Designer, Social Media Promoter and New Media Know-it-all at Delvinia in Toronto—and the guy to follow on Twitter).

On the hardware side of life, and in response to the commercial applications of AR, inventor and artist Julian Oliver’s handheld augmented reality projector, dubbed “The Artvertiser,” is designed for urban, “on-site substitution of advertising content for the purposes of exhibiting art.” Point the projector at an ad and presto: “the Artvertiser software is trained to recognize individual advertisements, each of which become a virtual ‘canvas’ on which an artist can exhibit images or video when viewed through the hand-held device. After training, where ever the advertisement appears, the chosen art will appear instead when viewed live through the hand-held device,” (from Oliver’s blog). The Artvertiser project inspired Undercurrent blogger Mike Arauz to comment on its potential to “kill display advertising as we know it.”

Or not. Image recognition software and handheld barcode scanning apps enable instant price matching and are the future of retail, according to many including the Advertising Lab blog. This month Nokia released an image recognition app for its cellphones called Point and Find, which also enables barcode scanning, and is LBA-ready, such that consumers can “pick up an item in a shop, read its code and perform tasks like compare its pricing with other stores, and then command your phone’s GPS to navigate you there,” says Kit Eaton over at the FastCompany blog. Unlike apps that enable price comparisons and redirect shoppers to competitors (such as the bove mentioned Point and Find, and Pongr) the developers behind StoreeXperience mobile barcode reader let retailers make the salesfloor more sticky by providing information about products on the shelf of the store shoppers are standing in at the time.

Filed Under: advertising Tagged With: apps, art, magazines, mobile, movies, Pixar

digital magazine publishing

February 20, 2009 By sidneyeve Leave a Comment

industry hit hard by recession:

While some publishers are swapping the print edition and going web-only, expanding their companion websites, others are cutting back on digital initiatives.

In 2008, across the magazine industry there was decline in single copy rack sales (down 1% overall), circulation figures (down 11%), and correspondingly, ad spend online and off (down 11%). And although we can usually count on the notion that s-x sells, even the adult entertainment industry publications are suffering as Hugh Hef’s famous glossy posted yearly revenues down 11% last year. The largest dips were at gossip and celebrity magazines and tabloids such as National Enquirer, US Weekly, OK! Weekly, In Touch, Life and Style, and Star Magazine, as consumers controlled our impulse buys at the checkout.

The exception: gossip mag Hello! Canada saw a 50% increase in single copy sales in the last half of 2008 over the same period in 2007. According to The Financial Post, this success story is linked to the title’s focus on British and European celebs, which according to Tracey McKinley, the magazine’s executive publisher, are more “relevant” to Canadian readers. Call it commonwealth nostalgia? This week the Canadian government announced the creation of a 75.5 MILLION dollar fund to keep the national periodical industry alive.

Overall in 2008, single-copy sales of Canadian consumer magazines fell 24%, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Total paid circulation, which includes subscriptions, fell almost 5%. In the US, 525 magazines were shut down in 2008–just over one per day (according to a report by MediaFinder).

With figures like this, optimism seems forced, but Mark Jamieson, CEO of Magazines Canada remains upbeat. “Although we are in a period of big change,” Jamieson admits (in a recent news release) “readership, including online, is as solid as it ever was, and magazine companies are well positioned for the long term.”

For some titles or publishers, that might mean swapping the print edition and going web-only, or expanding their companion websites. Or on the other hand, cutting back on digital initiatives, consolidating, canceling, and restructuring online offerings, such as they are doing at Conde Nast, where digital revenue in 2008 accounted for only 3% overall.

However eMagazines president Andrew Degenholtz suggests that “digital doesn’t replace a magazine that someone will grab at the checkout counter, but is a different customer motivation and has other promises.”

On that note David Pauly at Bloomberg.com confesses that although he is worried that Amazon’s Kindle will make hardcopy magazine, book, and newspaper publishing obsolete, personally he doesn’t like reading on a handheld device or any computer screen. Pauly continues nostalgically: “There’s something about holding a book on your lap or folding the newspaper in fourths like a commuter.”

Though not a panacea, at least digital magazine sales on the Kindle produce revenue for an industry struggling with consumers’ expectations that online content should be free.

Filed Under: magazines Tagged With: Amazon.com, celebrity, Conde Nast, e-books, kindle, magazines, newspapers, tabloid

displacement FX

February 19, 2009 By sidneyeve Leave a Comment

new media old media, competition & complementarity:

Does Internet use displace traditional forms of media consumption?Although we might not like our inky newsprint, digital news is gaining in popularity. In December online newspaper readership increased between 12% (according to Nieman Journalism Lab) and 16% (according to cnet), with 9 of the top 10 newspaper websites having a better year in 2008 than in 2007, as measured by Nielsen Online Media Research.

And we are consuming more TV than ever. Online TV program viewership is sharply increasing. Randal Stross at The New York Times suggests that the cultural appetite for television has been influenced and encouraged by the rise of You Tube, where in December, almost 100 million viewers in the United States watched 5.9 billion videos (according to comScore). What’s interesting according to Stross, is that Internet video consumption is not “cannibalizing” TV viewship–instead there is a complimentarity among visual technologies in our three screen culture.