{"id":2440,"date":"2013-10-21T08:59:42","date_gmt":"2013-10-21T08:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.immediapp.com\/swhype3\/?p=2440"},"modified":"2013-10-21T08:59:42","modified_gmt":"2013-10-21T08:59:42","slug":"newspaper-tablets-apps-were-the-future-what-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/newspaper-tablets-apps-were-the-future-what-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"Newspaper tablets apps were the future… what happened?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are the pay wall and the tablet really finding general consumer acceptance?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

There were high fives in the offices of Rupert Murdoch\u2019s News UK stable when the Apple iPad launched in 2010, just weeks ahead of the publisher\u2019s introduction of a risky new pay wall around the digital content of The Times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

To chief marketing officer Katie Vanneck and other senior executives it seemed symbiotic \u2013 here was a platform that could transform their chances of success as they ventured into paid digital content. Three years and a few months later and the tablet devices that Apple pioneered are almost ubiquitous. During this quarter, sales of tablets and their close cousins \u201cphablets\u201d (phones with seven-inch screens) will overhaul those of laptops.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

But is this proliferation of mobile devices really helping newspapers? Some of the big publishers claim it is. Associated Newspapers – publishers of the\u00a0Daily Mail<\/em>\u00a0– has announced that its tablet edition Daily Mail Plus has grown in circulation by 50 per cent since April, with daily sales of 14,937. This tablet edition costs 69p (compared to 60p for the paper).<\/p>\n

The sales are not huge for a publisher that attracts nine million browsers a day to its website. But Neil Johnson, managing director of Mail Plus, has highlighted a \u201cmassive expat potential readership\u201d and a noticeable growth in readers over the age of 45.<\/p>\n

This week News UK will release encouraging new figures for subscriptions to its\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0app, having revealed last Thursday that it had reached 150,000 digital subscribers for its\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Sunday Times<\/em>titles.<\/p>\n

Vanneck believes that both the pay wall and the tablet have found general acceptance. \u201cIt\u2019s a more mature market, three years on \u2013 it\u2019s on a traditional curve of early adopters into mainstream [consumers],\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

But away from the publishing companies the enthusiasm is more muted. Rob Lynam, head of press at the media agency MEC is sceptical. \u201cI think for publishers the uptake of tablet apps has been fairly disappointing,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of publishers were seeing tablets as the solution to declines in print circulations and largely it hasn\u2019t happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynam \u2013 who advises advertising clients on where to spend their money \u2013 is frustrated that news publishers deliver only \u201cirregular\u201d statistics on the performance of their apps.<\/p>\n

Newspapers have a fundamental problem, he says, in that most weekday tablet use takes place in the evenings. \u201cGiven the 24-hour news cycle lots of the apps will be out of date by the evening,\u201d he says, claiming that many users do not carry their device during the day. Vanneck disputes this. She says\u00a0Times<\/em>readers look at their copy on their commute. Evenings are a chance for publishers to offer \u201csecond screen\u201d experiences.<\/p>\n

In the view of media consultant Paul Thomas, the free BBC News app sets the standard in the market for innovative features and instant updates, creating a huge challenge for commercial publishers who must hope that the depth of their analysis and potency of their opinions are sufficient to persuade users to pay for an additional news source.<\/p>\n

Much has happened since 2010. Then there was the iPad, (initially offered at \u00a3429 plus VAT), while now British households can choose from a vast array at all price points (Argos\u2019s MyTablet is just \u00a399.99).<\/p>\n

For optimists like Vanneck, here lies opportunity. But for cynics a case still needs to be made. This is why the national news industry body Newsworks is launching the Tablet Project to examine the performance of 20 advertising campaigns on newspaper apps in five sectors from retail to motors. It will report early next year and give new insight into the behaviour of tablet users.<\/p>\n

With so many entertainment options on offer, many consumers are yet to be convinced they should use their devices for reading press reports \u2013 still less pay for them. Newspaper apps must offer premium content which can be viewed (not necessarily read) while watching television, listening to the radio or browsing online.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for the press, this is an evolving medium. For the innovative publisher, they still constitute a grand canvas filled with potential.<\/p>\n

Read the full story
\n(via The Independent)\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are the pay wall and the tablet really finding general consumer acceptance? With so many entertainment options on offer, many consumers are yet to be convinced they should use their devices for reading press reports \u2013 still less pay for them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[52],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[1687,616,2093,2094,2098,2091,1438,2095,2090,2096,2089,2087,2099,2100,996,1120,2092,801,2097,2088],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2440"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swhype.com\/video-production-agency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}