In 2010, Popular Science was one of the first consumer magazines to launch an iPad edition and has made more than $1.5 million from it to date. In this in-depth Case Study, Robert Cohn, Consumer Marketing Director at parent company Bonnier, reveals the many lessons learned from abandoning a free trial model for a composite prototype model that converts better, to the frustrations of getting data from Apple. This Case Study also includes tips and tricks for publishing and pricing tablet editions for Nook, Kindle, Android devices and Zinio. If you’re remotely interested in tablet publishing, this is the a must-read!
Company Profile
Founded: In print, 1872; Acquired by parent company Bonnier in 2007; Digital editions launched 2002; Tablet editions launched 2010; Tablet subscriptions launched 2011.
No. of Tablet Publications: Parent company Bonnier has 35 magazine apps and 20 stand-alone apps.
Employees: 40 full-time for Popular Science, use some part-time and freelancers for art dept. Bonnier has about 1000 employees in the US.
Business Model: Hybrid — subs, ads, single copy sales
Paying Subscribers: As of Dec 2012, 100,000 digital subscribers across all tablet formats.
Location: New York, NY
Website: http://www.popsci.com/
Target Market
Popular Science mainly targets men, ages 30 to 55, who are early adopters fond of technology and gadgets and curious to know about new inventions and innovations. While most of their readers are professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers), few are professional scientists. The tablet edition subscribers tend to skew a bit younger (mid-30s) compared to print subscribers (late 40s/early 50s). Like the iPad, 85% of Popular Science subscribers are male, 15% are female.
Content
Popular Science has two types of tablet editions — Popular Science+, an interactive app designed for the iPad and other tablets, and a flat digital edition that is basically a PDF version of the print magazine for Nook, Kindle Fire, Zinio, and other Android devices.
The iPad edition contains everything the print edition does (AAM — Formerly the Audit Bureau of Circulations — has guidelines dictating that the advertising and editorial be the same in both print and tablet editions), but also has bonus features, such as embedded video, animation, and extended content. Cohn says the iPad edition has about 20% more material than the print magazine. Bonnier also creates two version of each iPad issue — one for high retina display, and one for non-retina display.
The iPad and other digital editions are downloaded to consumer tablets, but the iPad edition also has a live Twitter and RSS feed that is updated automatically if the consumer has Wi-Fi access; if the consumer has no Wi-Fi access (such as when he is commuting via subway), the feeds are not updated.
The tablet editions are released monthly, with no updates in between. After an issue is closed, it takes two weeks to get the print magazine produced. During this interval, the staff at Popular Science works on the iPad enhancements. They release the iPad edition around the same time the print magazine is hitting newsstands.
The iPad edition usually requires 500 MB of data to download and view. (Note: In comparison, the average New Yorker iPad edition is 150-200 MB.) Cohn told us that one of the complaints Popular Science gets from tablet readers is that the issues take too long to download.
“That’s a difficult thing to balance. The more rich content, the more space the app occupies.”
In addition, Popular Science allows subscribers to archive old issues. The archive puts old issues in dead storage on Popular Science servers– it takes about 30 seconds to a minute for the app to reach out to the server and restore it. Popular Science can do this for iPad subscribers who have elected to share their email addresses with the company. (Apple does not automatically give publishers the email address or other customer details, but publishers can create a marketing “Opt In” by which subscribers can give their email address, first and last name and zip code. There is no option to get credit card numbers. See the Insider How-To article on “Selling Subscriptions through Apple” for more on this.) Cohn says about 55%-65% of subscribers volunteer this information.
The company uses Mag+ to publish the tablet edition, a software company developed as a partnership between Bonnier and Popular Science. However, after about 9 months, Mag+ was spun off as a separate company in order to market its software to other publishers. Mag+ basically serves as an Adobe plug-in, and lets the staff manipulate InDesign files.
Revenues
Popular Science garners over $25 million a year from its print and tablet editions. It’s also made more than $1.5 million in incremental revenues from its iPad app since its launch.
In terms of digital editions, subscriptions account for 55-65% of revenues from tablet editions, and 30-35% of revenues are from single issue sales.
Subscription Pricing & Platforms:
The iPad edition is by far the most popular digital edition, and most iPad subscribers buy the app through iTunes, not through the Popular Science website. About 10% of iPad subscribers are month-to-month; the rest are annual.
Apple and Google Play put all annual subscriptions on auto-renew. Zinio has about 5-%-70% of its subscribers on auto-renew, which it started marketing aggressively fairly recently.
Cohn says that the company had hoped that the Popular Science+ bundle would be more popular than it is. The company is currently in talks to create similar bundles with Nook and Kindle editions of the magazine, but the problem is getting Barnes & Noble to interface with Popular Science’s print fulfillment company. It also hasn’t been a major priority since the magazines sales on those devices are significantly less than iPad sales.
Some print subscribers complained since they assumed digital access would be bundled with their print subscription. Bonnier couldn’t figure how that model would work for their revenues and valuing the digital product, so they created the $5.99 “insider price.”
Advertising
Advertising for the tablet is part of regular magazine rate base. However, Popular Science will entertain companies wanting to create tablet-specific ads. This often includes digital enhancements, such as the BASF belly band, which was a horizontal ad over the iPad cover, which readers had to click on before they could open the issue.
Note: PopSci has avoided video advertising through the tablet. Even though video ads are possible and usually get high user-engagement, Popular Science has found that consumers looking for a reading experience find video ads highly disruptive.
Cohn told us that these ads are not sold on a CPM basis. Rather, they price “the project” and will then share all the data they can get on the ad’s success, such as what actions they took with ad, how much time with ad, etc.
“We’re trying to be transparent with advertisers and share what we know, but what we know is not perfect information,” Cohn told us. Agencies often want to know more about how many times someone opens an issue and then later returns. Popular Science can know how many customers purchase an issue and how many times they opened it if they’re still connected to Wi-Fi, but once a customer has downloaded the issue to their iPad, there’s no way to track engagement after that point.
There are no advertising metrics on the Nook, Kindle, Zinio or Android editions of the magazine. These ads, like the content, are static and the same as the print magazine.
Marketing Tactics
While there are a variety of ways of acquiring digital subscribers, Cohn says that finding out what works is incredibly difficult, mainly because the tablet platforms do not give publishers metrics. Cohn says discoverability is also a problem. “Since [most subscribers] buy the subscription through the iTunes store, we don’t know if they came upon us through search or because Apple promoted our tablet edition on their store homepage. If they do come through search, we also don’t know if they Googled “science magazines” or our brand name.”
Some of the tactics employed include:
Email Marketing
Popular Science will send marketing emails to their existing print subscribers as well as expires, but Cohn says less than 50% of those people have iPads. “If we knew which people had iPads, that would be more effective,” he commented.
To that end, PopSci tried renting lists of iPad users and emailing them special offers, but Cohn described that as “a dismal failure.” PopSci then tried swapping lists with other iPad magazines, and that’s generated some subscriptions but not tremendous amount.
Intercepts
When someone calls up the Popular Science website through their browser, the site can tell if that person is using an iPad device or not. If so, the site will serve up a special ad for the iPad edition.
Website Sales
The Combo Offer available through the Popular Science website has the added advantage of getting Popular Science customer emails, credit cards and other marketing data. Unfortunately, the offer has not been particularly popular, possibly because it’s not prominently featured on the site.
Platform-Specific Promotions
Apple features iPad magazines in its iTunes store, rotating out titles every two weeks. Popular Science definitely gets a boost in sales when they are featured in the store, and having a well-designed and professional product with digital enhancements definitely helps them secure this space. (Apple’s algorithm for selecting titles to highlight in their carousel is unknown, but we assume professional design and high interactivity are big predictors.)
Cohn told us that they also saw a spike in iPad sales in late December/early January because of all the people who received iPads as Christmas gifts.
Popular Science does very little to market its digital editions for Nook, Kindle, and Zinio, basically leaving it up to the vendors to market to their own groups of subscribers. Those vendors will occasionally lump the Popular Science tablet edition with two or three other magazines for special sales on holidays like Cyber Monday and Valentine’s Day.
Conversion Tactics
PopSci offers a number of different trial versions of their magazine:
The composite issue for the iPad is a 80-page issue with some of the magazine’s best articles, not only in terms of substance, but also digital enhancements. The publication tried a skin-and-bones current issue trial version, but the larger composite sample with digital enhancements was a better conversion driver. The composite issue lets Popular Science put its best foot forward while using archive material. Cohn says the conversion rate on the iPad issue, which is a native app, is much higher than the conversion rate for the digital replicas.
The other digital editions have a simple trial of the current issue. Trial lengths are determined by the platform/seller (e.g., Nook, Amazon, etc.) not Popular Science, hence the variation.
Since the platforms handle these credit card transactions (unless the subscriber signs up for Popular Science + through the Popular Science website), customer credit cards are already on file and charged automatically at the end of the trial. They are usually sent an email reminder towards the end of the trial from the platform provider, not Popular Science.
Cohn says they are also constrained by Apple’s terms of service. For example, Popular Science would love to offer an introductory price to new subscribers, but Apple won’t allow them to have differential pricing. They’re also willing to offer a premium incentive, like gear bags, etc. But again, Apple won’t let them.
Retention Tactics
Cohn says the publication would love to have average account lifetimes for month-to-month, and has some sense of annual account lifetimes, but it difficult to extract from the metrics Apple provides. Annual renewal rates are easier to decipher, although Popular Science cannot track individual subscribers through the Apple reports. Cohn says the second-year renewal rates are almost double what the publication is used to getting on print subscriptions.
Apple handles the auto-renewal process on annual subscription, and will send an email to subscribers a month to six weeks before the renewal date.
“We’re pretty much beholden to Apple’s renewal emails and their process. The only thing we can do is improve and ensure the quality of the editorial product.”
About Robert Cohn
Cohn has been the consumer marketing director of Popular Science since Bonnier bought the titles in spring of 2007. At the time, Popular Science was trying to create a digital edition for the Sony eReader, knowing that their audience of early adopters would be perfect for testing this version of publishing. In 2009, Popular Science got wind that Bonnier’s Swedish R&D arm was doing research on how people would read magazine content on a tablet.
“We put pressure on them to work with us since we’re the right editorial product and US market is bigger than the Swedish market.”
Cohn says the process has been both frustrating and exciting, and the biggest lesson learned is that there is a definite a market for a good quality, user-friendly tablet magazine that people will pay for.
He also encourages information sharing among publishers.
“Because the space is so new, a lot of publishers are sharing more information than we have traditionally, and I hope that continues and we can learn together. A rising tide lifts all boats. The more we create an environment where consumers read on tablets, the better it is for all of us.”
And when it comes to tablet design and publishing, he urges publishers to break away from simple reproduction and to innovate their content wisely.
Vendors & Technology
Hosting –The Popular Science website is hosted internally by the Bonnier IT department.
Converting to tablet editions for each platform — Mag+ for iPad, Libre Digital for Nook and Kindle Fire, Zinio converts material directly from pre-press files.
www.magplus.com
www.libredigital.com
www.zinio.com
Management & execution of subscription landing & order pages — Amstelnet LLC
www.amstelnet.com
Tablet payment processing — iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Zinio all do their own credit card processing and remit to Popular Science. Direct-to-publisher payment processing handled by Palm Coast Data.
www.palmcoastdata.com
Website payment gateway — First Data Commercial Services.
www.firstdata.com/global-selector.html
Subscription Fulfillment — Palm Coast Data
www.palmcoastdata.com
Email management — Silverpop
www.silverpop.com
Mobile app analytics — eMagazines Insight
www.emagazines.com/insight
Research on iPad app metrics — Omniture
www.omniture.com
Research on reader engagement with iPad app — MRI Starch Digital www.gfkmri.com/products/starch/starchdigital
List management (print & email) — Lake Group Media
www.lakegroupmedia.com
Subscriber studies — Bonnier Corporation Research Department
Subscription Site Insider Analysis
First, we’d like to thank Bonnier and Popular Science for their willingness to share their lessons from tablet publishing and for being pioneers in the industry. Their audience of early adopters is a perfect target for this sort of digital innovation, and we think Bonnier was wise in choosing to test out tablet publishing through the Popular Science title. We also congratulate them on pivoting when required by abandoning the free issue trial on the iPad and creating a composite prototype of the magazine that converts better. We also think it’s wise that the publication has kept its pricing consistent across all platforms; especially as early innovators, it’s best to test which device will get you the most subscribers without confounding those results with different price points. And we really like that the site has been discerning enough to create innovative ads but forego video advertising since it can potentially disrupt the reading experience.
Popular Science’s biggest problem when it comes to tablet publishing seems to be the lack of control it has over renewal efforts, payment processing, trial lengths, and evaluating acquisition marketing tactics. But this is hardly their fault. However, we do think they could do a better job of promoting their Popular Science + package through their website, which would get them more marketing data and control. Right now the offer is quite hidden in the site, and there’s a lot of space dedicated to promoting the iPad and other tablet editions, which then link to those platform-specific sites. Popular Science should remove those links (since the platforms are already promoting them), and force prospects to sign-up through their own site.
