Adobe Digital Publishing

By Craig Morrow & Will Steuber, MEI

We all know by now that tablet devices are the perfect medium for new companies to create rich, engaging content and they are helping traditional companies revitalize legacy brands in the same manner.  In the recent years, we’ve seen some pretty significant growth trumpeted by a diverse and well-known group of companies, which simply emphasizes the potential this medium has.  But it’s not just all about magazines.  When Adobe launched Digital Publishing Suite, it was a product/platform that everyone assumed was developed for the magazine world.  Nobody can argue that it’s done a fantastic job supporting that vertical but it has so much more potential not only within it, but well beyond.  Let’s talk about some of the other ways this device and the tools used to develop the content can help create or enhance revenue streams.

1. Sales and Marketing – Using tablet apps to deliver customized product information is something that is gaining a tremendous amount of traction in a short period of time.  We’re seeing many companies begin to explore and execute the creation of more meaningful, cost-effective and engaging product/service presentations for sales and marketing staff across various industries.

2. Custom Storefronts – Using custom storefronts to promote new subscription offers, product launches, promotions and even a dedicated social media channel is an area where we’re seeing extensive growth. Self-contained within the app, the storefront acts like a personalized presentation layer and allows you to promote and sell products while building brand awareness. More importantly, it provides a reason for customers to return, either directly through push notifications or working in concert with your marketing campaigns. Not to mention you can control the look and feel. With the creation of a custom storefront, a company can break free of the default Digital Publishing Suite folio grid view on the home screen and take control of the look, feel and user experience.

3. Advertising – New tablet ownership has a projected growth rate through 2015 that would make any economist (or tablet manufacturer) grin.  This growth will begin to provide the type of momentum needed to get more advertisers to partner with digital content providers.  Layer on top of that the new trends in the e-commerce space and you’re left with a new game-changing platform. We have all read the research that shows the majority of magazine readers want to purchase directly from articles and/or directly from the ads. That’s now a viable and proven alternative.

Simply put, these devices, when married to the right creative toolsets, can not only create rich, engaging experiences for readers but have the potential to revolutionize how your organizations are conducting business,  internally and externally.  Reducing your reliance on physical material and shipping to market and promoting your products makes for a very easy ROI model capable of yielding significant results in a short period of time.  Using built-in analytics to showcase real numbers on readership lift, demographics and subscriptions is another very compelling case that most advertisers would love to see… right before they pay you more money to place their ads, of course.  Finally, using custom storefronts, a feature inherent in the Enterprise version of Digital Publishing Suite, is just now beginning to show its real power and versatility in creating a more personalized experience between you and your audience, providing them with an intelligent, engaging destination to consume your content the way they want to.

Join us at the Adobe Meets MPA session on In-App Merchandising Through a Custom Store on Tuesday, February 28th in New York City. Custom in-app stores are essential if you want to drive additional revenue streams by cross-selling and upselling content, products, and services through your app. Stephen Hart, Adobe Digital Publishing Solutions Manager, will share insight on business opportunities provided by in-app merchandising, as well as advise on best practices and resources required when building in-app stores.

How can you extend digital versions of your publication to your current print subscribers, maintain a relationship with your readers through your app, and provide them with special offers? The answer is direct entitlement. The Digital Publishing Suite team here at Adobe has developed materials to help you better understand direct entitlement, both what it is and how it works. In his video on direct entitlement, Colin Fleming outlines the challenges and the opportunities of extending digital subscriptions to existing print readers, describes the solution provided by Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Enterprise Edition, and provides background on how to set up direct entitlement. The whitepaper on direct entitlement goes into detail on the strategic advantage of direct entitlement and provides background information on how it works.

Challenge: Offering Print Subscribers Convenient Access to Digital Issues 

A Comprehensive Subscriber Database Drives Business
As many readers of this blog realize, print subscriptions allow a publisher to develop a database of readers in order to collect information that aids in targeted upselling and cross selling to those readers. Subscriptions also offer publishers a consistent and renewable revenue stream across a 12 to 24 month period. To maintain a subscriber base, publishers go to great lengths to offer benefits to readers such as special editions and free gifts. Maintaining a database of loyal subscribers and knowing one’s reader demographics is essential to attracting advertising dollars and driving revenue through targeted marketing.

Business Limitations of the App Marketplaces
Publishers can use Digital Publishing Suite, Professional and Enterprise Editions, to sell subscriptions through leading application stores. However, selling subscriptions and single issues through app stores carries some limitations. On the business side, device stores only provide the publisher with an email address, and not extensive contact information, limiting the ability to both communicate with customers and build an accurate profile of its readership.  This makes it more difficult to market to the end consumer of the digital issue or subscription over the long term. Publishers have spent many years building up a print subscriber base, and the goal of the Digital Publishing Suite team is to help publishers easily maintain this relationship when transitioning to digital distribution.  Digital strategists at publishing companies are very focused on quickly accelerating digital readership in order to generate digital subscription and advertising revenue. As you know, advertising dollars depend on the accuracy and extensiveness of a reader database.

Consumer Limitations of the App Marketplaces
On the consumer side, an increasing number of print subscribers want to have access to digital content on all their devices.  If a reader has already purchased a print subscription, she does not want to purchase digital issues through the application store on her device.  If she purchases the subscription through the app store, she will not have access to back issues in digital format even if she has the print versions at home. Compounding the problem, if this user has multiple devices, she then needs to purchase a digital subscription through the application stores on each device.  All this leads to massive inconvenience for the print subscriber who simply wants to access digital issues that she has already paid for.  It is also in the publisher’s best interest to ensure that this high value print subscriber can access digital issues in order to keep this customer happy and simultaneously drive readership of digital content.

Solution: Direct Entitlement
Direct entitlement refers to the mechanism that allows publishers, member organizations, or corporations to make specific .folio files available to certain readers based on login credentials. In the case of magazines, it allows publishers to provide digital content to existing subscribers in one click. Business publishers can use direct entitlement to make specific content available to employees or members of an organization based on login credentials. A feature of Enterprise Edition of Digital Publishing Suite, direct entitlement strengthens the digital relationship between a publisher and reader by providing the publisher with user data. Digital Publishing Suite integrates with a publisher’s third-party or proprietary fulfillment system to make tablet content available to existing subscribers. The publisher knows which titles the reader subscribes to and the period of time the subscription has lasted. With access to user data, the publisher can provide special offers to each segment of its readership.

How Does It Work?
Adobe Digital Publishing Suite has created an API that works with entitlement services such as CDS Global, Time Customer Service (TCS), or Palm Coast Data (PCD). These subscription services allow publishers to house customer data with minimal coding. When a subscriber goes through a publisher’s website and sets up an ID, the fulfillment server, rather than the application store, houses the user data.

There are three basic stages of direct entitlement: Authentication, Entitlement, and Fulfillment.

• Authentication occurs when the reader taps on a banner in the viewer library that is designed for existing magazine subscribers. (See “Current Magazine Subscribers: Tap Here for Access” in the Reader’s Digest example below.) This is the “entitlement banner,” which is built with HTML5 and takes the user to an in-app view of the publisher’s web page. In the authentication process, the user creates an ID based on a print or web subscription. Then the user uses this new ID to sign in to the application.

• Entitlement: A publisher’s entitlement service provides a list of publications that a reader is entitled to, including special editions and back issues. When a user logs into the app, the entitlement service provides this list of publications to the device.

• Fulfillment: When a user chooses to download a publication, the app requests the publication from the fulfillment service, which is housed on Adobe servers. The fulfillment service confirms the user is entitled to the publication.

Learn More

• Watch Colin Fleming’s Direct Entitlement video on Adobe TV
• Read the whitepaper, Managing Customer Entitlement with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite
• Read about digital subscription payment options in Director of Product Management, Zeke Koch’s blog post
• Learn more about Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Enterprise Edition

The Audit Bureau of Circulations today released new
guidelines for what counts towards “paid and verified” magazine circulation -
including how to account for digital magazines. In its news release and digital circulation
guidelines, ABC notes that the digital
edition of WIRED will be included in the
magazine’s total “paid and verified” circulation.

Specifically, the ABC notes that digital magazines like
WIRED will count towards a “Digital Edition – Replica” category that is
subsequently included in total circulation. This replica category comprises digital magazines that
represent the full editorial and advertising content of the publication. No longer, however, does the content
have to be presented in exactly the
same layout as in print.

Okay… so what does this mean? Well, it has implications for publishers, readers, and
advertisers.

The new guidelines mean publishers
can include digital copies in the rate base circulation figures they guarantee
to advertisers. With this
inclusion, magazines can (1) more accurately represent the reach they deliver
to advertisers and (2) capture that value through increased CPM rates.

For readers, it
means an even more engaging digital magazine experience. Magazine publishers will increasingly
make more content available in immersive, interactive digital formats because
they are able to attract advertisers to it.

Finally, advertisers
are able to audit the number of readers publications connect with on
emerging tablet/smartphone devices. This means advertisers can count on digital platforms to deliver reach. The promise of digital is not only to
deliver reach though, but also engagement. With the new interactive advertising formats
applications like WIRED offer, advertisers are able to involve readers directly
at a deeper level – without leaving the magazine content experience.

I’m back from the FIPP Digital Innovators Summit last week in Berlin, Germany where a variety of international publishers presented their strategies for monetizing digital content. If there’s one thing that was clear from the conference, it’s that there’s a lot of confusion on what a “digital strategy” means.

Many publishers only use their Web site as part of their digital strategy. Of this group, some companies are using the Web to drive traffic to additional monetized services (i.e paid job listing boards for newspapers; wedding mag TheKnot.com has an entire strategy around wedding services). Some other publishers are using a premium paid content model (The Economist). Still others are trying to monetize via iPhone apps (or expecting to monetize via iPad apps). None are placing their bets on increased CPM rates from ads.

The challenge in monetizing digital content lies in the fact that content has become a commodity. Given the confusion over monetization at the Digital Innovators Summit though, it was clear to me that publishers don’t just need another monetization model. Fundamentally, we need to increase the value around content by transforming it into a content experience. It is this content experience that provides differentiation and allows publishers to monetize more effectively.

What is a content experience? One way could be an application like we’ve produced with WIRED magazine that allows increased reader engagement and interactivity with both content and ads. Instead of passively sifting through articles online, readers navigate through the magazine in innovative ways, interact with photo slideshows/video snippets, and engage with advertising content (like through 360 degree object rotation). These interactive features, combined with the tablet form-factor, allow publishers to reach readers in new ways and provide a differentiated option that creates value. Instead of just another monetization model, we need to think about what readers actually want from the content they consume.  Increasingly, readers will want a connection with their content in new and innovative ways – a content experience.