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Magazine publishers urged to get a mobile strategy at Digital Innovators' Summit

By Peter Houston |

March 25, 2014 | 3 min read

Innovation Media Consulting has launched its 2014 "Innovations in Magazine Media" report at this week's Digital Innovators' Summit in Berlin. Published in partnership with worldwide magazine media association FIPP, the publication contains almost 40 case studies for magazine publishers looking to get to grips with the digital transformation of their businesses.

The Digital Innovation Summit gets underway in Berlin

Presenting the report, IMC partner Juan Señor said previous editions had been about prognostications, but this one is about prescriptions. "This year we felt like editors of a guide rather than a forecast," he said.

He identified several familiar trends for magazine publishers to focus on: video, native advertising, programmatic and big data. But top of his agenda for magazine publishers was the the development of a mobile strategy. "This is the 'Mobile Moment', the tipping point where mobile traffic overtakes desktop," he said.

Many magazine publishers have found it difficult to bring marketers along with them on their mobile offerings. This is because they have been going about things the wrong way, said Señor. "Trying to migrate PDFs onto devices is a mistake we see repeated over and over again."

He says the future is to create 'untethered' apps, responsive content in HTML5, designed once but published everywhere. But publishers need a clear strategy to be clear on what they are publishing and why they publish on to specific mobile platforms.

Visual content, especially video, topped the list. Although he acknowledged that it would be a challenge for text based publishers to make the move, his advice was to "start shooting today".

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