DCP Dialogue

Online Magazine Video Usage Soars

There’s a lot of talk about the current and future explosion of video usage in online magazines. Take a look at Steve Smith’s recent article, Magazine Video Streams Up 90% in 2010, for some exciting numbers from major technology provider Brightcove.

Here are three key points from this article that quantify how video viewing and production have increased in the past year:

1. “Among its magazine publisher clients, Brightcove streamed 190 million videos in the first quarter of 2010, up 90% from the 99 million video streams during the same period last year.”
2. “In terms of “player loads” or the number of times a video player’s assets are loaded onto a page in order to make them playable, magazines had 1.2 billion player loads in Q1, up 70% from same quarter last year.”
3. “The number of discrete video assets loaded into the Brightcove system from magazine publishers was up 60%, from 27,224 in Q1 2009 to 43,554 in 2010.”

If you’re trying to convince someone of the popularity of video in online magazines, these numbers are very encouraging.

Digital Magazines vs. Online Magazine Microsites vs. Websites

What’s the Best Solution?

There are many options for presenting magazine-style content online. How do you know which approach is ideal for your publication? You can start by answering three simple questions.

1. Is your online magazine an extension of a print publication?
2. Do you want to optimize your online magazine for web viewing?
3. Will you update your online magazine content regularly?

First, what are the different solutions?

If we put online magazines on a continuum with print-centric solutions (PDF/Digital Magazine) on the left to web-centric solutions (full featured website) on the right, magazine microsites would fall in the middle. Below are explanations of each.

PDFs are the simplest online versions of a print magazine. You just post the PDF file of your magazine online and allow people to view it. But it’s not very compelling for readers because:

• Large files are often blocked by firewalls and slow to download
• Readers don’t want to download big files onto their computer
• Reader experience is cumbersome—you have to read pages sequentially
• No interactive content

This option is also limiting for publishers—you can’t add rich media or new content, you can’t track viewer activity, and search engine optimization (SEO) is limited. This solution is quickly becoming obsolete.

Digital Magazines (flip books) are high-quality online replicas of print publications that offer value-added functionality such as interactive media and live links. There’s no file downloading and it’s easier for readers to navigate with a flexible control strip and search functionality. Advertisers like this approach because they can replicate print advertisements online and embed active links to their website. However, people find these solutions hard to read because they’re based on PDFs that were designed for print viewing, not for the Web. Reading requires a lot of zooming in and zooming out. And publishers can’t add new content. Digital magazines are a lively way to view a static print magazine online.

Online Magazine Microsites are HTML-based solutions that take advantage of the design and interactive possibilities of the Web. Based on a print publication or an online-only magazine, it’s a dynamic gathering place where readers peruse your magazine content, view rich media (videos, podcasts, slideshows), and link to your social media sites. Online magazines replicate the magazine-reading experience with a flag treatment, Table of Contents, feature stories, and departments. By mixing custom designed feature articles with various article templates, you don’t have to design every page from scratch. Instead, you upload content as often as you want using a simple Content Management System (CMS). Readers prefer this solution because articles are easy to consume and graphically compelling, content is updated regularly, plus navigation is highly intuitive.

Websites can be used to house online magazine content for organizations’ whose primary business is magazine publishing. For these companies, the main website is an extension of the magazine. For organizations that do more than magazine publishing, articles posted on the primary site get lost unless they’re packaged in a magazine microsite.

What are the ideal scenarios for each solution?
Getting back to the original questions….

1. Is your online magazine an extension of a print publication?
2. Do you want to optimize your online magazine for web viewing?
3. Will you update your online magazine content regularly?

If your online magazine is based on a print publication you can consider all options. But if you’re creating a web-only magazine it makes sense to focus solely on web-centric solutions. Why create a print-centric publication to be viewed online? Why invest in designing each and every page of your publication from scratch when it’s never going to print? There are much more efficient ways to do this. If you plan to update your content regularly, PDF/Digital Magazines are not a viable solution—an online magazine or website is the way to go.

The ideal scenarios for each solution are:

PDF/Digital Magazines
You have a print issue and have already invested in the design of each page. Repurpose it. Don't want to add any extra content; just want to replicate your print piece. Great for magazines with ads—publishers can sell online ad space in addition to print.

Online Magazine Microsites
You want to extend your magazine's brand online and give your magazine lovers a solution optimized for the Web. Regularly post fresh content to keep your audience engaged. Make your magazine a two-way conversation with your audience through article commenting.

Websites
Your company is all about your online magazine. Readers don’t distinguish between your magazine’s brand and your organization’s brand.

The Ultimate Online Magazine Solution

As a marketing director, I’m well aware that you’re not supposed to plug your own company’s products on your blog. So please pardon me for breaking this rule but I really think you should take a look at a powerful new online magazine tool from DCP.

Over the years, we’ve provided our clients with different ways to publish their valuable print content on the Web. We started by offering a basic HTML version of their print publication that we call an ePub™.  Functional and inexpensive, this simple solution does a nice job of converting print content into an HTML-based online publication. But its templated approach doesn’t take full advantage of the design and interactive possibilities of the Web. While it replicates the print content, is doesn’t give clients the ability to extend it.

When the digital “flip-book” products gained popularity, DCP jumped on that trend. The good news with the digital magazine solution is that you preserve the beautiful layout of your print issue. The bad news is that it’s hard for your audience to read digital magazines because the print layout doesn’t translate well to a computer screen. The font is typically too small to read when viewing a full page, causing readers to have to constantly zoom in and out. Navigation is also a bit tedious. Clearly, this is not the most user-friendly solution.

DCP performed extensive research to find the best solution to bring a print publication to life online. WebExtra™, our new product, is a powerful, cost-effective online magazine tool that allows you to extend the reach and effectiveness of your magazine without spending an arm and a leg!

Some of the biggest advantages of WebExtra:

• With an easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS), you can regularly post fresh content — including articles, videos, slideshows, and audiocasts—that keep your audience engaged 24/7/365.
• Make your magazine a two-way conversation with your audience through article commenting and Ask the Expert features.
• Extend the content from your print edition by linking readers to relevant videos, podcasts, slideshows, etc.
• Promote news, events, or whatever you want in real time with WebExtra’s built-in event calendar that is highlighted on the home page.
• The custom designed feature stories look even better online than in print!
• This fully hosted solution presents no burden on your IT department and links seamlessly to your main website.

Take a look at the latest edition of WebExtra produced for UC Hastings College of the Law at magazine.uchastings.edu . Imagine what WebExtra can do for your print content!

The Digital Magazine Debate

If you’ve ever viewed a digital magazine, I’ll bet you have a strong opinion to contribute to the ongoing digital magazine debate. Some people love the ingenious page-turning software, while some people are offended by the difficulty of reading such small type. Others prefer the basic PDF solution, mainly because it’s practically free. But as we all have more experience with digital magazines, many of us are coming to the realization that what’s ideal for print is not ideal for the Web.

As Publishing Executive E-Media Strategist Eric Shanfelt stated in his recent article, Why Digital Magazines Don’t Have to Suck, “Ultimately we need to come to terms with the fact that Online is not print.”

In this insightful article, Shanfelt reacts to his media executive friend’s proclamation, “Digital magazines suck. They’re not print, and they’re not Web. It seems like a lazy way to get online instead of investing in a really good Web site.” I agree with Shanfelt’s assessment that the ideal digital magazine is easy to read on a computer screen and uses interactivity (i.e. video, audio, animation, etc.) to provide a rich, in-depth experience.

If time and budget were a non-issue, we would all create custom magazine Web sites. But that’s not reality, and that’s why DCP offers digital magazine solutions for every budget. We’re hoping that over time more organizations will decide, like UC Hastings College of the Law recently did, to invest in interactive magazine Web sites. What they’ll create is not just a digital replica of their print publication, but a lively meeting place for their most loyal audience.