The first step for many publishers was making their content readable on devices like the tablet. That often meant using off-the-shelf software to pretty much reproduce the magazine as a glorified PDF.
Now, with tablet use soaring, magazine brands in particular are getting serious about how they present their content on tablets. New York Magazine, for instance, is rolling out a new app that rethinks its role on tablets, aiming to be a hybrid of a Web experience and the magazine experience.
The new app lets readers see both daily and weekly content. Daily content gets refreshed when you open the app and will keep for five days. Fifteen to 20 stories will be uploaded per day.
The app is a freemium model. Daily content is available to anyone who downloads the app. Weekly content is for subscribers only. The print subscription costs $30 per year; digital-only is $19.99. Readers can choose to do a month-to-month plan for $1.99 per month, or they can buy a single copy for $4.99.
“We felt it was time to be serious about his and have a digital subscription product,” said Michael Silberman, NY Mag’s digital general manager. “We wanted to have a richer magazine experience, and a PDF didn’t make sense.”
One of the major issues facing publishers is getting people to come back to their apps. Retention is hard, but NY Mag believes that by offering daily Web content in the app, people will keep refreshing.
TekServe is the sponsor for the next two months. Ads on the daily side of the app will have a standard leaderboard, as well as small box ads every eight to 10 articles in the table of contents. It’s a sponsorship model for daily content. Print ads are carried over, and it’s up to the advertiser and agency to translate the print asset to the app. On the weekly content side, these ads will be displayed as full page interstitials. For the daily Web content on the app, ads are sold through the digital side.
New York used WonderFactory for design and its own developers for the back end.
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