By Nicola Brookes, Atex Communications Manager
Posted on January 26 10:59, 2012
The shift from print to mobile reading went into overdrive over Christmas, with ownership of e-readers and tablets doubling in a single month. One might even argue that they are being adopted faster than any other consumer electronics or communications products of all time.
A study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that the percentage of adults owning tablets increased from 10% to 19% between December and January, with the same growth rate seen among e-readers like the Kindle. Both were reported as the most wished-for gifts at Christmas, and take-up was accelerated by the arrival of value-priced products like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet – both of which are far below the iPad’s price point.
With the doubling of mass market adoption in just 30 days from a significant base, should alarm bells be ringing for traditional publishers that still manage their business around print audiences? After all, when was the last time we saw figures like these for mass-market newspapers or magazines?
The popularity of tablets and e-readers as a means of accessing the web is booming, so it’s already pretty clear that they are changing the function of ‘reading.’ Nearly three-quarters of iPad owners say that owning a tablet has reduced the frequency with which they purchase newspapers, magazines and books. This says more about peoples' desire for convenience and choice than it does about gadget lust.
Whether it helps or harms print content providers remains to be seen, but the answer for longevity in the media market is repurposing content for publication across a range of platforms. Consumers now expect to get whatever they want, whenever they want, in whatever form they choose, and for the publisher, this represents a new means of monetising content. The need for on-demand, multi-platform publishing, has never been more important.
Media companies now need to make every piece of content, on every platform, work harder than ever before. Print, online and mobile audiences have different demands for the content they consume, and none of this is possible without the enabling technology that supports multimedia content, together with multichannel delivery.
In the UK, Johnston Press is live on a multichannel Atex publishing system for nearly 1000 print products and 261 websites. Its editors work in a single CMS environment to produce and deliver content for both print and online channels. The company now produces an incredible 17,000 printed pages each week and its websites generate more than 40 million page views every week.
In 2010, Johnston Press reported an increase in operating profits for the first time since 2006, with digital revenues growing by 10.9 percent and costs lowered by £13.6m. Prior to Atex, the company had to duplicate and reformat content for print, web and mobile channels. Today, the template-driven user interface means that editors can publish a single piece of content to multiple channels without creating copies of the content.
So against the backdrop of the dramatic changes in the media landscape, the secret to longevity and increased revenues really is simple – any content, delivered anywhere, anytime and in whatever format your readers require.
