Hearst Gains 800,000 Digital Subscribers in 2012, 266% Growth from 2011

Hearst Magazine’s president David Carey recently issued an open company-wide letter stating that it ended 2012 with 800,000 monthly digital subscribers across its iPad,

Hearst Magazine’s president David Carey recently issued an open company-wide letter stating that it ended 2012 with 800,000 monthly digital subscribers across its iPad, Nooks, Kindle Fires and Android devices. That’s a 266% increase since 2011, when the company had only 300,000 digital subscribers.

Most interestingly, 80% of digital subscribers were new to the company’s files, indicating that digital subscriptions are able to capture an audience not interested or served by print. And while there was no data on these new subscribers, it’s reasonable to assume they’re also a younger demographic, indicating that tablet subscriptions may be able to make up for audience attrition in the consumer magazine industry in a way Web-based subscriptions have not.

But reaching new audiences also takes a certain amount of flexibility, especially now when technology platforms — and preferences — are changing rapidly. Case and point — Heart’s 2011 digital subscribers were spread across “iTunes, Zinio, Nook, Amazon and Next Issue Media,” but Carey didn’t list Zinio and Heart’s own Next Issue platform in this year’s letter.

In fact, staying on top of technological improvements is becoming increasingly more important in the B2C niche. Marvel comics has seen some modest success with its Digital Comics Unlimited subscription service (think Netflix for recent and archived comics), but only recently created a version using HTML instead of Flash that can be viewed on the iPad (thoroughly reviewed by TechHive). The advancement is sure to lead to a major increase in revenues, but its curious why the company took so long to adapt.

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