In September of 2008, Ryan Marquis checked his email on his iPhone while flipping through a magazine. In a flash, he and co-founder/CEO Mark Stubbs had the idea for PixelMags, which allows consumers to “flip through” a magazine on the iPhone.
PLUS: Check out photos below from MPA's Meet the Innovators event, featuring the PixelMags co-founders.
THE BIG Q: How should magazine publishers be using mobile?
Ryan Marquis, Co-Founder COO, PixelMags LLC: They need to monetize their digital content, via paid subscriptions, back issues, in-App purchasing and interactive advertisements.
With PixelMags, publishers are able to deliver digital replicas of their print material with zero financial outlays and added monetization opportunities through advertising. We offer the additional benefit of having a relationship with the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), the non-profit that provides circulation figures for some 4,000 media members nationwide. ABC has committed to counting all of its paid magazines as actual circulation figures.
In my experience, when it comes to magazines on mobile devices, consumers want their favorite magazine, good value for their money, with a fantastic user experience with no data connection. In other words, the convenience to get content when they want it and how they want it for a price they can afford.
PixelMags has responded to this consumer need by developing a product that has numerous features, including an organized and sleek library based on iPhone album-browsing functionality, the most realistic page turning on the iPhone, robust searching capabilities, landscape and portrait displays with text rendered and arranged in real-time zooms, a contents menu, interactive multimedia content, in-App purchasing, headline alerts, bookmarks and annotations, push notifications, and sharing features. To provide an even richer user experience, PixelMags users will be able to browse and purchase new, future, and back issues, as well as subscriptions right from the application instead of using the App Store or the Web.
Along with the rise of the Smartphone, publishers and advertisers are increasingly taking a closer look at mobile as a potential way to boost their revenues. More than 80% of newspapers and magazine respondents in a recent survey done by the ABC say that people will rely more heavily on mobile devices as a primary source of information in the next three years. Even more significantly, 70% of these same respondents said that mobile is receiving more attention at their publication this year than it did last year and 56% said that their publication was planning to develop a Smartphone application in response. That’s on top of the 17% of respondents who say their publication already has an app. PixelMags plans to take advantage of this growth and the increased interest of publishers in mobile publishing by releasing its best-in-class iPhone magazine reader.
We will also launch our marketing efforts in all 89 countries where the iPhone and the iPod Touch are currently available, although particular attention will be paid to the US, the UK, Brazil, and Japan.
-Interview by Mark J. Miller
PHOTOS FROM MPA'S MEET THE INNOVATORS LUNCHEONFeaturing PixelMags' Ryan Marquis and Mark Stubbs, on November 12, 2009 in New York City.
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