Digital's Siren Song Lures Publishers, But Advertisers Hear a Different Tune

Circulation Management, Sept 1, 2003

In this day and age of ever-tightening budgets, it's so tempting for magazine publishers to think of eliminating - or at least significantly reducing - the production and postage costs associated with publishing print editions by shifting to digital formats.

But while digital edition/distribution technology offers some advantages to publishers, it hasn't yet won over legions of readers, and it has the potential to open up new cans of worms in the advertising community, as Barbara Love uncovers in this month's feature stories, "Digital Editions: Are they Viable Yet?" and "Will Advertisers Kill the Goose Before It Lays a Golden Egg?"

With the ubiquity of computers, the convenience the search capability adds to navigating a publication, and the speed of electronic delivery, why aren't larger numbers of readers jumping at the opportunity to consume their favorite publications in digital format?

It turns out there are many reasons. First and foremost is the portability issue, which when you really get down to it, is in many ways really a "comfort" issue. Because although many of us are equipped to access documents from anywhere at anytime with our laptops and an Internet connection (and that certainly qualifies as portable), we still perceive the ability to physically carry a magazine with us wherever we go as the ultimate in portability. And let's face it, there are places where it's not convenient to take a laptop, and where there are no Internet connections.

Another big obstacle to making a concerted shift from print to digital in the magazine world is advertising support. While there are some advantages to digital ads, such as dynamic creative elements and interactivity, they're more expensive to create, and advertisers' budgets are as tight as everyone else's these days. From a publisher standpoint, there's also the scary prospect that because advertisers know the technology is available to track clickthroughs within electronic documents, they will begin demanding specific usage stats that show whether readers are actually looking at their ads or not. That in turn, could lead to a negotiation of ad rates and demands from advertisers to pay only for the number of eyeballs that their ads are attracting.

At this point, while the digital frontier bears watching and offers promises for the future, publishers are finding it easier to think about simply popping those print copies in the mail every week or month. And from a potential lost business standpoint, that route is arguably still cheaper as well.

Write to us at cmedit@primediabusiness.com or P.O. Box 4235, Stamford, CT 06907-0235, or call (203) 358-4285.