Adobe Digital Publishing

Results released from consumer survey of mobile purchasing behavior

In recent months, retail catalogers have increasingly expressed interest in producing apps that drive revenue and consumer engagement on tablet and mobile device. Today, we’re releasing the results of a new study that examines the purchasing and usage behaviors of consumers on mobile devices.

The 2013 Digital Publishing Report: Retail Apps & Buying Habits, Adobe’s U.S based survey of 1,003 consumers who use a smartphone and/or tablet, highlights data points about consumer preferences for shopping and catalog apps. New insights from the study show that retailers must adapt to meet the rising expectations for specialized mobile shopping experiences, and that the usage of mobile apps by consumers is on the rise.

In the survey results, respondents indicated that tablet users (55%) are almost twice as likely as smartphone users (28%) to purchase products and services from their devices. Across both mobile platforms, the use of retail apps will increase by approximately 15% in 2013 – more than half of all mobile shoppers are likely to make a purchase using a shopping app in the next year (56% of smartphone shoppers and 60% of tablet shoppers).

The findings also reveal that retail and catalog apps are rapidly catching up to mobile browsers as a viable shopping channel: nearly half of all mobile shoppers are interested in using apps instead of a mobile browser (45% of tablet shoppers and 49% of smartphone shoppers). Smartphone shoppers cite the slow speed of browsers and the ease of navigation on apps as reasons for their interest in using apps and digital catalogs. Of people who don’t currently shop on mobile devices, one in four intends to use mobile apps to shop in 2013.

Industry leaders like ASOS and Sotheby’s are among those who have used Digital Publishing Suite to engage customers and clients with tablet and smartphone apps – and for good reason. With increased opportunities for brand interaction and engagement, it’s no surprise that 38% of tablet shoppers and 42% of smartphone shoppers responded that app interactions strengthened their connection to the brand.

Finally, the survey results show that purchasing behavior is most influenced by a recommendation from a trusted friend, which creates the need for social sharing features in retail apps and catalogs – such as sharing products, reviews and news – to be effective in driving purchases and app downloads.

Learn more about retail apps and buying habits, and see how publishers are using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to engage mobile consumers:

• 2013 Digital Publishing Report: Retail Apps & Buying Habits
• Infographic:

(PDF download of infographic available here)

The largest consumer magazine publishers in the world are powered by Adobe Digital Publishing Suite

Adobe is excited to announce that Time Inc. is publishing Real Simple to the Apple App store using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite (DPS).  With launch of this app, Adobe now powers mobile and tablet apps to the top five largest consumer magazine publishers in North America who collectively deliver content to over 200 million readers[1] in North America.  Time Inc. now joins Meredith, Hearst, Condé Nast, and Reader’s Digest, all of whom are partnering with Adobe to digitally publish magazines as apps for iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire and other leading Android tablets and devices.  With support from Adobe, these leading publishers are demonstrating innovation through stand-out mobile applications that have been lauded for their high quality design and extended consumer engagement.

The publishing industry has undergone considerable transformation in the last three years.  With the initial launch of WIRED on the iPad, a cascade of applications have followed Condé Nast in publishing highly regarded magazine and newspaper applications to a variety of tablet and smartphone devices using Adobe DPS.

Reading behavior of magazine and newspaper apps continue to be shaped as we move into 2013.  However, Digital Publishing Suite applications are setting the standard for excellence in readership. A recent report from iMonitor shows that the top five apps to achieve a perfect iMonitor app rating were built with DPS.  These apps were highly scored because they are “easy to navigate and appropriately leverage the iPad’s capabilities to both fully engage their users and to expand upon the service typically provided by more traditional media forms.”

In the last 12 months, there have been over 50M issues downloaded from applications created with DPS.  Additionally, data from these applications indicates that users are willing to pay for digital content with over 60% of readers purchasing an application as a single issue or a digital subscription.

The successes go on.  National Geographic recently stated that they are expecting to exceed their goal of 300,000 paid digital readers before the end of the year.  Hearst has over 1M digital readers and continues to grow.  Rodale recently noted that they predict that Men’s Health will surpass 100,000 paid digital readers this year. While still small compared to print circulations, digital circulation will continue to climb as the number of tablets and smartphones accelerates.  Case in point, roughly 1 in every 2 adults in the US is expected to have a tablet by 2013 (117.4MM users).[2] That is a lot of potential magazine and newspaper readers.

Adobe is proud to be working with many of the world’s most renowned publishers. Our goal is to empower publishing companies with innovative tools, technology, workflows and support to ensure their brands can be designed and delivered to readers where and when they want to engage with their content.

Our customers who use DPS for retail catalogs will be excited about today’s news. This holiday season, Adobe forecasts 21% of U.S. online retail sales to come from mobile devices, with a peak on Black Friday when 24% of online sales will be from mobile. To put this in perspective, Black Friday is expected to bring in $2 billion for retailers, which means that $480 million will be driven by mobile purchases. You can track these data points, and many more, on the Adobe Digital Index Holiday Forecast Interactive Website this season. The Adobe Digital Index 2012 Online Shopping Forecast is built on anonymous Omniture data aggregated from over 150 billion online visits to 500 retail websites in the U.S. and Europe over the past six years. Adobe has big data and we are not afraid to use it.

The data shows that mobile retail shopping habits are rapidly growing – and it’s important for retailers to not miss out on these affluent customers. In the United States, sales from mobile devices is projected to increase 110% over 2011 sales. In Europe, sales from mobile devices is predicted to double.

While many retailers have websites designed for mobile, some savvy retailers use Digital Publishing Suite to drive traffic directly from highly designed digital catalogs to their websites. By bringing the catalog experience to life with videos, 360 rotation and other interactivity, they’re immersing customers in the product experience.  What’s more, with online shopping available in tablet catalogs, retailers are turning browsers into shoppers.

Data Points Worth Tracking
United States
24% of online sales for Black Friday will be from Mobile
-        13% Tablet
-        10% Mobile
-        1% Other

21% of online sales for the holiday season will be Mobile
-        13.5% Tablet
-        6.5 % Mobile
-        1% Other

Sales from mobile devices will be 12% of online holiday sales in Europe up from 6% last year. Online sales from tablets will more than double those in 2011 and sales from mobile phones will double those of 2011.

• Bookmark the Adobe Digital Index Holiday Forecast interactive website and track predictions for the coming year.
• Check out the Adobe Digital Index Holiday Forecast infographic
• Learn about retail catalogs built with Digital Publishing Suite, including Lakeland, ASOS, and Dick’s Sporting Goods

The release of the new iPad has created quite a stir in the publishing community, and designers are eager to learn best practices for delivering high quality content for all versions of the iPad. Colin Fleming and the designers at Adobe have provided several resources for publishing to the new iPad. Fleming wrote a white paper, Best practices for using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to publish to the new iPad, which was updated this week. In addition, he hosted an Ask a Pro session on Friday, April 6th. These recommendations are written with the intent of helping designers work most efficiently:  to build the highest quality display with minimal effort.

The Basics
Before you dive into our recording of Fleming’s Ask a Pro session or open up the white paper, it’s helpful to understand the three basic rules of publishing to the new iPad.

1. Create your articles in PDF format
Compared to raster formats like PNG, the PDF file type results in smaller folio file sizes.

2. Use renditions
Build folios with the same folio name at both 1024 and 2048 resolutions; these different sizes of the same folio are known as renditions. When renditions are used in multi-folio apps, Content Viewer will detect the correct folio size according to the device size, and only the correct folio size will be downloaded to the device.

3. Rebuild the branded app using Viewer Builder and publish
Rebuild your branded app in Viewer Builder using high-resolution app icons and UI assets so that your brand assets look crisp on the retina display. Also make sure you publish both renditions (1024 and 2048) before sending push notifications.

The white paper contains information on:

• Working with overlays to minimize file size
• Building renditions
• Managing metadata
• Creating assets for both resolutions in Viewer Builder

 Watch the Ask a Pro session here

For more information, read Bob Bringhurst’s Guidelines for Creating Folios for iPad3 and visit the Digital Publishing Suite Developer Center.

Vogue, built with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, was released on the new iPad on Friday. It’s apropos that Vogue would be a trendsetter and lead the publishing industry into the new iPad era. Both fashion and publishing build their business on stunning photography, which is enhanced by the new iPad’s retina display. With four times the pixel density, it makes every image pop: runway shots that exhibit vibrant displays of cutting edge fashion, rich and colorful video of Jennifer Lopez’s cover shoot, captivating photographs by Annie Leibovitz, and crisp typography throughout. Also, after I downloaded it on my new iPad, the folio installed incredibly fast.

When you open up the app on the new iPad, check out the ads. Tablet ads are already worth more, because of the audience that they reach and the type of content that they sit alongside. The rich colors in Revlon makeup ads are eye catching, drawing in the attention of a premium audience. The crystal clear, backlit Versace image has a veritable glow.

Below is screenshot of the Jennifer Lopez video, followed by a comparison of two images: one with the iPad 2 (top) and one with the new iPad (bottom). Check out the resolution on the typography. This level of detail, even in the photo captions, gives the layout an even cleaner, crisper look and feel.

Jennifer Lopez Video Screenshot

Vogue Image on iPad 2

Vogue Image on the New iPad

Stay tuned. We’ll talk more about Vogue on the new iPad this week, and what this means for the publishing industry. In the meantime…

· Visit the Digital Publishing Developer Center for initial guidelines on publishing to the new iPad
· Download Vogue from the app store

With today’s new iPad announcement, we’re hearing excitement from our publishing customers about taking advantage of the high-definition retina display and faster processing capabilities of Apple’s new device.  When the new iPad ships, Digital Publishing Suite customers will have support for these new features in the Adobe Content Viewer. This means you’ll be able to display stunning, full-bleed, immersive publications using every pixel of the 2048 x 1536 display with richer color saturation using Adobe Content Viewer technology.  When the newest build of Content Viewer is approved in the Apple App Store, these features will be supported in all published new iPad applications.

What’s more, Digital Publishing Suite customers will be able to take advantage of the faster processing capabilities enabled by the new iPad’s Apple A5X processor — especially important when delivering video to engage readers. With video comprising nearly 20% of all interactivity in Digital PublishingSuite-produced apps (among other stats we released last week), publishers will be able to engage, inform and entertain their readers with faster video and other types of interactivity rendered with Adobe Content Viewer on the new iPad.

Using Digital Publishing Suite, traditional media and corporate publishers along with ad agencies and brand organizations can produce compelling content for the new iPad using existing designer skillsets within their organization.  Combining iPad support with integrated analytics and advanced entitlement capabilities in Enterprise Edition, Digital Publishing Suite is the end-to-end solution for publishers serious about inspiring their audiences – and driving business results.

Learn more about how to start publishing with Digital Publishing Suite