To Sell Integrated Media,
the Media Have to "Get It" First

By Karlene Lukovitz
President, KL MediaLink LLC

As part of covering all kinds of media for a variety of business publications over the years, I've reported on digital magazines since their inception.

This cross between print and the Web was intriguing from the first, but it came with a lot of question marks, most of which boiled down to: How well would readers and advertisers take to it? Skepticism being a basic tool of the reporting trade, my own "wait and see" stance has been in place for about years now.

Frankly, when first asked to dig into the current scenario for DMN, I wondered how much there was to cover—positive, negative or otherwise. Sure, digital magazines are still around, but isn't all the real action in Web sites, social media and mobile? Aren't digital magazines a "transitional" technology?

The probing process continues, but one point that's clear is that digital magazines are guilty as charged on the transitional score, in more ways than one. First, it turns out that, like other media looking to survive in the face of digital technology's relentless advancement, this one has continued to adapt and evolve. Driven too by the growing field of competitors in the space, digital vendors as a group have proved markedly willing to invest in enhancing capabilities like video and adding new ones like RSS feeds and mobile accessibility.

Yet, the truth is that this medium's future is uncertain. No one knows what path digital magazines will ultimately take—any more than we know exactly where other media are headed. As ad sales consultant Josh Gordon has pointed out in his blog, television, cable, radio and yes, the Web (Internet2 is now in beta at universities) are all in transition, big-time. I’m no tech guru, but given the morphing taking place before our eyes, seems to me that a lot of media may be non-existent—at least in the sense of being unrecognizable as we now know them—within a few years.

Integration is today's Holy Grail for media and advertisers alike. It's a moving target, but it's premised on one reality: Each media channel has value and each has limitations. None reaches all members of a targeted audience all of the time, so the objective is to offer advertisers as many points of access as possible to a defined audience. As media, our job is to understand how various segments access a brand’s content and sell these as a coherent package, for maximum reach.

Anyone endeavoring to ferret out where digital magazines really stand will encounter comments to the effect that some media buyers and advertisers still don't "get" digital magazines. Indeed, Gordon—who's actually a big believer in the value of this medium—has written exactly that.

But to the degree that this is still true, I have to say that I honestly don't get why some in the advertising community don't get it.

It took time for this medium to reach scalability for advertising purposes, but that no longer seems an issue, at least in the B-to-B space. Hundreds of market-leading titles now have audit histories showing that significant segments of their audiences choose the digital format year after year.

A user's ability to skip ads can certainly be construed as a weakness, but it's one shared by basically all media. With TiVo and DVR playback, we no longer have to resort to flipping TV (or radio) channels or leaving the room to avoid commercials. Indeed, according to the forensically statistics-oriented site TV By the Numbers, "nobody" watches commercials in DVR playback. In 2007, the wonks behind this site announced that "we finally have statistical proof that DVR viewers are completely lost to advertisers."

True, an ad may be "seen" while we’re flipping through a magazine or newspaper, and it may be literally in our faces when we click into a Web site or open an enewsletter. But let’s be real: Even when people were less bombarded with information and options and advertising (and perhaps had more time to read carefully), relatively few read every page of every issue of a print publication. Today, the same can be said for content in enewsletters, Web sites, you name it. We're all selective consumers of every medium to which we are intentionally or unintentionally exposed.

Media buyers love online's ability to provide "accountability," meaning metrics justifying their buys to the client. But putting an impression in someone's visual path, or even eliciting a click-through, doesn't necessarily translate to quality time spent with a brand. I can't be entirely alone in having many a time accidentally launched a Web ad—to my great irritation—while simply trying get it off my screen. Or in being unable (subconsciously unwilling?) to recall exactly which integration-savvy brand is responsible for attacking me with an “endearing” mascot or spokesperson wherever I wander in my media travels.

On the open rate front, I've yet to see any convincing evidence that digital magazines perform any less well than enewsletters or print vehicles. And their performance against the Web would, for starters, all depend on what you're comparing.

Even in this day of scarily sophisticated tracking, the truth is that we frequently don't know what originally drove someone to a Web site or another digital medium or access point. Campaigns that seek to drive people directly to a Web site can measure their success via traffic patterns and pre-supplied user access codes, etc...but big unknowns remain. For instance, social media-generated word-of-mouth via a growing range of devices/channels is proving a game-changer, but most tracking in this arena tells us only that people are "talking" or "tweeting" about a brand—not whether the buzz is positive or negative.

Digital magazine readers are of course also Web users: Not only are most digital publications browser-based with an accompanying PDF download capability, but their links into advertiser sites, the media brand's site and related content sites all drive trackable Web traffic. (By the way, social network-driven awareness and consumption of digital magazine content is also on the rise, and this emerging phenomenon could prove significant for publishers and advertisers alike.)

Meanwhile, readers who elect to receive B-to-B publications in print also consume other media, turning to relevant Web sites and enewsletters to one degree or another. Some value having access to a brand's content in both print and digital edition formats. (See "Print/Digital Combo Strategies," this issue.) Others rely mainly on Web sites for their vertical business content.

Bringing us back to integration—the core concept that all of these media complement one another—and the question of how well digital magazines fit in for advertising purposes.

Gordon has advocated the formation of a trade association to back in-depth, objective research on digital magazines’ value as advertising vehicles. While that kind of investment seems unlikely, certainly in this economy, his core point seems valid. Within the full media context, my guess is that having such data would probably work largely in favor of digital magazines.

Based on logic—which admittedly doesn't always pan out in the real world—I'm inclined to believe that once inside, readers tend to spend more time in digital magazine issues than on Web sites, and even click through to ads at a greater rate, as some vendors and publishers report.

If you've taken the trouble to subscribe to a digital publication (either by paying or answering a list of qualifying questions), open it on your browser and perhaps download it, you've invested time and effort. Which means you're likely an "engaged" reader looking for industry- or topic-specific info, including sponsored content and ads that are credible and relevant to your needs.

Smart advertisers must be watching not just click-throughs, but actual time spent in their sites and prospect follow-through (as in requests for more info and ultimate purchase behavior), right?

Well, regardless of how sophisticated or unsophisticated an advertiser or group of advertisers may be about integrated media and tracking ROI, isn't it—once again—our job as media seeking their dollars to demonstrate how our various touchpoints bring strength to the overall proposition or package? Shouldn’t our advertising salespeople by now be armed with legitimate data and arguments for how these pieces can work together to the honest benefit of a specific marketer?

All of the above considered, I can't help but suspect that in many cases, the disconnects re the potential or actual value of digital magazine audiences have more to do with the individual publisher, product and media salesperson than with the media buyer or advertiser.

The more you delve into how digital magazines are being used, the clearer it becomes that the publishers who are fully involved in leveraging this format are by and large the same ones who are fully leveraging their Web sites, print, events and other channels.

These publishers aren't the ones reporting resistance to digital editions from media buyers; they're too busy working with advertisers to find cost-effective ways to make ad messages and value-added content as visible and compelling as possible.

In this issue, one prime example is Lightwave's addition of sponsored in-issue content and embedded video editorial content that seems a natural for attracting sponsors. But as I'm discovering, publisher/advertiser partnerships are resulting in a surprising number of innovative formats and programs, which are honed, expanded or abandoned depending on their initial results.

By no coincidence, the publishers who are innovating and gaining traction on the advertising front in the digital magazine format and other channels also have strong editorial products with loyal audiences. They're coming from a position of strength, rather than defensiveness.

Even with all of the value-added capabilities at our disposal today, continuing to invest in relevant, useful editorial content remains the underlying "secret" to success no matter how content is delivered. The publishers who get that, along with the need for innovation and solution-oriented integrated marketing, are the ones who will not only survive this dreadful economy, but emerge in a stronger position.