Apps or WAPs?
Publishers are extending brand and audience reach into applications for smart phones.
Publishers these days are all about “digital innovation.” And some more than others are experimenting with as many digital content platforms as possible to build brand awareness and, more importantly, provide products whenever and wherever their audience wants them. Downloadable applications for smart phones—iPhones and their ilk—are one such experiment that is having promising results.
Condé Nast is building applications for the iPhone—available for free at iPhone’s App Store—for Style.com, Wired and other brands. The Style.com app, essentially a way to access and view feeds of photos, videos and reviews of fashion shows, has 200,000 downloads in the last seven months and has gone through three updates.
Content Matches Platform
“This is a nice match for the iPhone,” says Richard Glosser, executive director, emerging media, Condé Nast Digital. “When you look at the photos—and the fashion runway photos are beautiful photos—the iPhone displays them in a terrific way. They load quickly, you can use your finger to slideshow through them; you can zoom and pinch as the app allows; you can find out more information on the designer. It’s a great utility for the audience of Style.com.”
Glosser says the opportunity was creating an added benefit for consumers, an approach Reed Business Information’s Variety also took when it launched an iPhone app in February. For Abe Burns, Variety’s director of online marketing, the print to online platform expansion honeymoon period has long since passed. “We’re no longer just print and online,” says Burns. “We’re exploring other platforms. It’s a full-service strategy to get our content out as much as possible.”
Much like the Web site, Variety’s app has news, reviews, photos and video coverage of the entertainment industry. Content buckets for the app were pulled in according to what was most popular on the site. More than 7,000 downloads were recorded in the first week and has since grown to 20,000.
Burns categorizes the downloaders as “core” users, but says it’s more about pushing the content to anyone who wants to use it. Glosser says the Style.com app users are likely more aligned with the Web portal brand than any of the print brands that feed into it, but adds that Style.com’s brand “carry-through” has helped facilitate the downloads—rather than serendipitous iPhone app searchers who are unfamiliar with the site.
Metrics Basic, But Monetizable
Analytics are in the early stages, but engagement can be measured using familiar metrics specific to what users are viewing on the app. Variety averages about 500 users per day. Glosser says metrics revolve around how many downloads and number of users, as well as ads served. The Style.com app has served up 5 million ads, which come in three flavors: A logo unit that appears on the app’s “home page,” a bumper that appears before a new section loads, and a “10-pack” ad format that’s popular in slide shows where an ad appears on every tenth slide. “We can sell advertisers an ad on the site and extend that to the iPhone app,” says Glosser.
Variety has a sponsor-based ad model for now, which includes a banner-style display that appears at the bottom of the screen.
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