Adobe
announced that its digital media push is paying off with serious momentum in
its digital publishing products, additional HTML5 support, enhanced video and
developer tools support.
At Mobile World Congress
(MWC) 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, Adobe Systems announced that more than 16
million digital publications were powered by its Adobe
Digital Publishing Suite across tablets over the last year. The company
also released key information about digital magazine and newspaper application
usage, based on anonymous data aggregated from nearly 600 publishers worldwide that
have created around 1,500 tablet publications using the Adobe Digital
Publishing Suite.
In
addition, Adobe announced new innovations that add more enterprise-class
functionality and extensibility to the Digital Publishing Suite, helping
organizations drive digital revenue and brand engagement through digital
publications. Key enhancements include new in-app merchandising, provisioning
of targeted content based on user role and accelerated app creation.
The
anonymous, aggregate data is derived from publications delivered using the Adobe
Digital Publishing Suite and shows shifts in reading patterns, willingness to
pay for tablet applications, accelerated purchase funnel and advertising
engagement.
In a call
with reporters, Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager of
Interactive Development at Adobe, said tablets are driving new revenue for
publishers as consumers pay for digital media content. Business publishers are
also using tablet applications to drive awareness of their brands as well as
the purchase of goods and services. Winokur said 68 percent of readers
worldwide currently pay for digital magazines and newspapers built with the
Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. This is made up of single-issue purchases (15
percent), subscriptions (26 percent), and bundles of print and digital issues
(27 percent).
In
addition, readers are highly engaged with both editorial and advertising
content, Winokur said. Every fifth page view in a Digital Publishing Suite
magazine app is an advertisement. Interactivity—which includes Web views,
videos, slide shows, audio clips, image sequences, hyperlinks and other
overlays—can also have a profound impact on a reader’s digital content
consumption and engagement, with readers interacting with nearly half (48
percent) of all interactive features in Digital Publishing Suite apps, he said.
Out of the variety of interactive overlays included in applications, Web views
and videos are the two types most frequently accessed by readers.
Moreover,
more than half (56 percent) of readers spend between 25 minutes to 2.5 hours a month
reading their digital titles. Time spent consuming content has increased 70
percent over the last six months, which can be attributed to more sophisticated
and engaging content as well as the continued adoption of tablets. Consumers
tend to open a Digital Publishing Suite application up to five times per month
on average, and 9 percent of readers spend more than 5 hours per month reading
digital titles, which suggests that they are frequently engaging on a tablet
with the brands they enjoy.
“We
saw 16 million digital publications downloaded over the last 12 months, with no
signs of fatigue,” said Zeke Koch, senior director of product management
for Digital Publishing at Adobe, in a statement. “As digital issues grow
significantly, Adobe will continue to fuel this evolution by providing
innovative features that allow publishers and corporations worldwide to drive
digital revenue, accelerated readership and purchase of content.”
Publishers
such as Rodale and Active Interest Media and companies like Sotheby’s have
recently published magazine, merchandising and customer loyalty applications.
Similarly, enterprises now have the opportunity to add digital content into
their mobile marketing mix by creating a broad range of digital publications
using Digital Publishing Suite, including sales and marketing collateral,
corporate communications, as well as brand loyalty, customer acquisition and
customer retention materials.
“Adobe
Digital Publishing Suite has allowed us to amaze and satisfy our readers with
technological innovation that they crave and expect,” said Anthony
Cerretani, deputy editor and digital director at Backpacker Magazine, in a
statement. “We’ve been able to integrate interactive maps, adventure
videos from all over the world, and touch-point-powered content that inspires
and enables our readers to experience outdoor adventure in incredibly dynamic
ways. They’re even contributing multimedia to our editions on a regular basis.
With the flexibility of Adobe’s tools, we’re finding new ways to optimize the
experience every month.”
“As
we focus on reaching our increasingly global client base, Adobe Digital
Publishing Suite provides an elegant platform and enjoyable user experience,”
said Amy Todd Middleton, worldwide director of marketing for Sotheby’s, in a
statement. “Our Sotheby’s catalogue app combines the visual aesthetic
of our print catalogues in a new convenient digital format. Analytics show
that people are spending more time browsing our content offline in a more
interactive environment. With zoom, original videos and 360-degree
photography, it is a great alternative to being in the room with a work of art.”
Key
features in the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite include:
- Restricted Distribution—Publishers can
provision specific content to a variety of customer, reader or member groups
within one branded application. - Custom Notifications—Customers can
leverage in-app notifications to cross-promote and market availability of
publications and other content. Already embraced by select Condé Nast
publications, publishers and brand organizations can use custom notifications
as in-app marketing to drive demand for magazine issues. - HTML5 Support—Publishers such as The
New Yorker and National Geographic are using HTML5 within their digital
publications for in-app custom storefronts, inline content and complete
articles. Similarly, advertisers are including HTML5 within interactive
advertisements to drive consumer engagement. - Other
enterprise-class features include Direct
Entitlement (publishers can provide digital content to existing
subscribers in one click), Analytics
(Digital Publishing provides both Base Analytics as well as the ability to
integrate with an existing SiteCatalyst account) and Custom Content Viewer (publishers can create a Content Viewer for
multiple devices that supports full-screen viewing of content).
