April 27, 2009
Publishers Seize on iPhone as Great White Digital Hope for Print
How magazines and newspapers are cashing in with iPhone apps. Adage reports.
Condé Nast Digital's Style.com app, which plays video of Fashion Week runway shows has been downloaded 230,000 times since its introduction last August And it represents the first way publishers are making money from apps: by selling ads or sponsorships on them. The Style app, free to consumers, served 2 million ad impressions for marketers such as H&M in the first quarter of the year.
About 90,000 people have downloaded the free Lucky at Your Service app which helps users find nearby stores with certain shoes or bags in stock since its debut just two months ago. It's a brilliant brand extension, another way publishers want apps to further their business.
... But many publishers would also like to turn iTunes into a virtual newsstand and subscription hub.
The Wall Street Journal, for example, plans to start charging for some of the content people get from its free app, which it upgraded earlier this month. But that app pulls news content from the web. Selling digital editions of print issues, certainly magazines' chief asset, has had limited prospects until now.
"The digital edition as it currently exists, as a replica, has great value for some percentage of the population -- a small percentage," said Cimarron Buser, senior VP-marketing and business development at Texterity.
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