Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Magazine Site Licensing and the BPA Worldwide
Magazine "site licenses". Boring? Hardly. This is actually a great way for all types of publishers to increase reach and revenue in these challenging times.
Currently, a number of professional and trade publishers are distributing to corporations and libraries a "digital edition" for sharing. And many others would like to.
However, publishers that are audited by BPA Worldwide, and would like to "count" these subscriptions on their audit statements, cannot. (The ABC already allows a form of this reporting.)
Currently, BPA Worldwide requires that a contract must require the administrator of the license to notify all individuals of the availability of each issue. Licenses are reported only for a specific number of seats -- and a global or corporate-wide agreement cannot be reported.
There is a lively blog discussion on the topic of "BPA considering non-request electronic circulation as qualified" which directly relates to this issue.
So, one idea is to combine the corporate-wide agreement model with a tracking/reporting 'usage' report (i.e., the number of readers per month). Perhaps we can use the new BPA/Nielsen system as a way to report these to advertisers.
Texterity has announced a new IP address authentication method (see Texterity Announces Site Licensing Program for Digital Editions. However, having the technical means to provide IP address range and "domain" content protection and authorization doesn't solve the "accountability" problem.
Texterity pledges to work with publishers and audit organizations to provide innovative ways to server readers, the publishers, and the advertsers in an accountable and effective manner.
Currently, a number of professional and trade publishers are distributing to corporations and libraries a "digital edition" for sharing. And many others would like to.
However, publishers that are audited by BPA Worldwide, and would like to "count" these subscriptions on their audit statements, cannot. (The ABC already allows a form of this reporting.)
Currently, BPA Worldwide requires that a contract must require the administrator of the license to notify all individuals of the availability of each issue. Licenses are reported only for a specific number of seats -- and a global or corporate-wide agreement cannot be reported.
There is a lively blog discussion on the topic of "BPA considering non-request electronic circulation as qualified" which directly relates to this issue.
So, one idea is to combine the corporate-wide agreement model with a tracking/reporting 'usage' report (i.e., the number of readers per month). Perhaps we can use the new BPA/Nielsen system as a way to report these to advertisers.
Texterity has announced a new IP address authentication method (see Texterity Announces Site Licensing Program for Digital Editions. However, having the technical means to provide IP address range and "domain" content protection and authorization doesn't solve the "accountability" problem.
Texterity pledges to work with publishers and audit organizations to provide innovative ways to server readers, the publishers, and the advertsers in an accountable and effective manner.
Labels: BPA, BPA Circulation, Site Licenses
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Digital Magazine Reader Research for 2008
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.
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
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