Digital issues are often criticized for being nothing more than a flash site with a page turning effect. And if you are looking at how a typical digital issue looked just a year or two back that would probably be the case. However, a fast growing trend towards more interactive and richer publications is in the market. There has been a switch from seeing animations or videos as pure eye-candy to the current state where rich media can actually add value.

Digital issues drive targeted traffic

At Zmags we appreciate this trend and we have found some data to fully support it. Atlantic City, for example, is using Zmags for their interactive visitors guide. They find that when including videos, awareness is really boosted. On average pages with video get about twice as many views, and 5-10 times more click-throughs, than pages without video. Now if that is not value-add…

How smart publishers make revenue

From these results it is not difficult to see, why digital issues is on the move. It is actually turning into a brand new type of media that apart from looking good and catching the readers’ attention, is the answer to the revenue challenge many publishers are facing. Some of our customers have used ads in this new media as a part of their media kit. There are multiple ways to charge for rich content, once you have some great content out there:

* Setting up a page 0 ad, placed to the left of the front page is a popular way to make a digital advertisement.

* Video ads, where small movies are placed on dedicated spots in the digital issue or as a mouse-over effect on an ad is also providing revenue for publishers.

Yet, it’s early stage, but we have no doubts that an entire new media is evolving.

New features for digital issues

At Zmags we are not just watching trends. Recently we made updates to our self-service publishing tool for digital issues. It is now possible to setup rich media on spans like on this live magazine. Another feature gives publishers the ability to choose from four different ways to load and present all the rich media content in the digital issue. That can really boost performance, and if you are looking for a strong tool for your magazines, newspaper or other kind of collateral, performance and flexibility would be areas worth looking into.

Zmags Live Magazine shows examples of page 0 ads, embedded video and double page animations. Browse and enjoy!