The New “Touch” of Magazines

In the first decade of online magazines, there were relatively few great successes. Limited presentation and portability meant that readers did not clamor to sit down at a PC or with a laptop to read a magazine. Although many consumer magazines developed apps to put their titles on smartphones, these did not attract the attention of users. As one critic noted, “Whether squeezing facsimiles of print magazines onto a mobile phone is at all appealing to consumers is another issue.”¹

Now though, magazines may have found their most suitable online medium in touchscreen tablets. Apple was the first to make a significant splash with the introduction of the iPad in 2010. The iPad is the closest a device has gotten to simulating the tactile experience of holding a magazine and flipping its pages, with the dimensions and crisp color presentation similar to most consumer magazines. Since that time, the iPad has been released in even more sophisticated updates, and Amazon’s Kindle Fire, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Google Nexus 7, and Microsoft’s Surface have all emerged as worthy alternatives.

For the magazine industry, rocked by a recession and rising costs for paper, printing, and distribution, the iPad and other tablets offer the opportunity to reinvent magazines for a digital age. A number of popular magazines immediately adapted to the iPad, including Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour, Wired, Cosmopolitan, Time, National Geographic, Men’s Health, Popular Science, and Entertainment Weekly. And the publishing world seemed excited by the new opportunities tablets will provide for engaging readers and sharing content in new ways. As Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired, said, “We finally have a digital platform that allows us to retain all the rich visual features of high-gloss print, from lavish design to glorious photography, while augmenting it with video, animations, additional content and full interactivity.”² In fact, one of Wired’s first issues on the iPad featured a cover article on Toy Story 3 that included videos and animations of the film that showed off the magazine’s new capabilities.

The migration from print to digital editions of magazines is still a process that will take years, and maybe even one or two generations, says Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner. Wenner remains a strong advocate of the print magazine product. “To rush to throw away your magazine business and move it on the iPad is just sheer insanity and insecurity and fear,” he says.³ Ironically, Wenner Media’s publications (Rolling Stone, Us Weekly, and Men’s Journal) have some of the highest rates of digital readership compared to other major magazine publishers, with 45 percent of readers consuming digital-only or digital and print editions.⁴ Still, the magazine industry is in the throes of a significant transition. Seventy-five percent of consumers responded that they feel digital magazine content complements print, and most of them still want a printed copy. But 25 percent of consumers feel digital replaces print, and those are readers the magazine industry won’t want to lose.⁵

Perhaps the most encouraging news for the magazine industry is that digital magazines may provide unprecedented opportunities for advertisers. According to one study, “70% of tablet owners say they want to be able to buy items by clicking on an ad in a digital magazine.”⁶ If the digital magazine industry can deliver those results to its advertisers, the future of the magazine industry looks very promising.