Digital Magazines Could Be Hugely Successful

Digital only magazines have the potential to be hugely successful, but it is imperative that publishers get the distribution models right for their audiences.

This was one of the themes at today’s MediaTel Group seminar on the ‘Future of Consumer Magazines’, with e-zines such as Dennis Publishing’s Monkey and the National Magazine Company’s Jellyfish, which was trialled last year, up for discussion.

Speaking about why the trial did not result in a launch for Jellyfish, panellist Duncan Edwards, chief executive of The National Magazine Company, said: “The problem we found was in distribution.

“The way that we were distributing this product was through email, so you registered as a user of Jellyfish and we would then send you an email with a link on it every week which took you to the magazine.

“For the particular demographic we were aiming for, which was the late teens/early twenties female audience – they don’t really use email that much. So we kind of missed that in the research. People use their email in order to register on IM or Bebo or Facebook, and what happens is that their communication is done through those tools rather than through email.”

He added that some people in the magazine’s target demographic could go months at a time without checking their emails.

Fellow panellist Mike Soutar, chief executive of ShortList Media, said that he had been very impressed by the trial version of Jellyfish, adding that it was “superior to Monkey”.

He added that if the distribution method had been right, the magazine “would have been a massive hit”.

Monkey, which launched in November 2006, last month posted an ABCe figure of almost 272,000, up by more than 29.5% year on year.

Monkey is delivered via email, and this figure takes into account each publication opened.