Digital Publishing Insights

Finally.... we released the 2008 Digital Magazine Reader Survey Results. We appreciate the help of BPA Worldwide who certified the results, and Mediamark Research, who helped run the survey system and assisted us on the methodology.

This was a monumental task - we surveyed readers of 161 publications from 51 different publishers. Although many of the questions were similar to those of the last two years, we also included some "new" questions. For example, asking "How many of the last 4 issues" were read, which could be compared to similar surveys of print magazines.

What was most surprising? Even with a much larger sample size of over 33,000 respondents, and roughly 1/3 "consumer" readers, the average age still hovers around 45 years old. What does this mean? Perhaps the readers of our magazines are just a bit older... As I've said, if we surveyed a "teen magazine" the age would come down, but most of our magazines are either b-to-b and professional, or targeted to "baby boomer" consumers.

The good news: satisfaction levels still are high with 89% of people saying they are satisfied or very satisfied with our digital edition. In fact, the number of "very satisfied" increased significantly this year.

Another interesting trend is the increase in the importance of "green" (environment) as a reason for using digital. It now ranks slightly above portability and ease of search as one of the "Top Three" reasons.

If you're interested in the results, you can see them for yourself. Just proceed to www.texterity.com/survey, or you can read the synopsis in the press release.

Labels: BPA, digital magazine research, MRI

Gilbane Group just released "Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Growth, Trends, and Best Practices," a comprehensive study of the growing market for digital editions of periodical publications. To view the report in Texterity interactive format, go to http://info.texterity.com/info/2008GilbaneReport

We are thrilled by the results. At a high level, the report shows that the number of business-to-business (B-to-B) publications offering digital editions has increased over 300% from 2005 to 2007, with total subscriptions also increasing over 300%. Digital vs. print penetration of B-to-B subscribers is up from 13.3 to 15.0% over the same period.

When Texterity approached Gilbane Group last year about creating such a report, we were not sure what the results would be. Our goal was to create a higher level of awareness about the digital edition industry, and to that end, we worked with Gilbane Group and also encouraged other providers to participate. We were happy to see both the level of participation at such a high rate, and the results which speak so positively to this (relatively) new industry.