One pretty universal truth about the mag+ publishing clients is that they’d like to monetize their apps. While mag+ and the app ecosystem give creatives—and especially magazines—the best platform for creating digital content, advertising can’t be ignored. In fact, mobile, iPad, and tablet publications give advertisers an ideal scenario: the large immersive canvas that makes beautiful display advertising so valuable, combined with the opportunity for multimedia, interactivity, and trackability (time spent, times viewed) that only digital provides. It’s the best combination of magazine and Web advertising.
This is not just wishful thinking—several studies have backed up the notion that dedicated mobile and tablet ads have higher engagement than print or web advertising. As per a survey, in general, 80 percent of the online readers spent more than 30 minutes with a digital publication (40 percent spent more than an hour) and more than 50 percent opted to share their personal data when they subscribed.
There are three primary ways to incorporate advertisers into mag+ publications:
Traditional advertising
An app publisher can choose to include print ads as static images or request InDesign files from advertisers so that an in-house production team can remake them in mag+. This gives publishers a chance to upsell additional digital features, like embedded video or Web links. Since mag+ tools are free to download and use, it’s also possible for advertisers to create custom ads for mag+ publications. Agencies can download free mag+ tools, design their dream ad and simply deliver the completed InDesign file or finished MIB for the digital publication to include.
Or advertisers can create their ads in HTML, sized to the device canvas, and send on the HTML package. For the publication, including this is as easy as opening the mag+ template, drawing a box of the size of the screen and pointing to that .html file. However, in-app browsers behave differently than Mobile Safari, so we strongly encourage anyone creating an HTML ad to either download the mag+ tools and test it on the reviewer or work with the publication to do so, with plenty of time to tweak if something isn’t looking right.
Sponsorship
Some brands prefer monetizing their publications via sponsorship, either by one or by several companies. We’ve seen pubs doing this by including a single ad per digital issue or selling category-exclusive sponsorships, allowing a company to be, say, the only auto advertiser in a certain number of issues. Besides, a publisher can sell these sponsorships as a part of larger packages that may include Web and print.
Sponsors can have traditional ads in the issue, or, if the app itself is sponsored, can take advantage of other spaces in the app to tout their brand. Here are some ideas:
- Ads built native to mag+ in InDesign plug-in
- HTML ads are either embedded in the mag+ issue or loading live
- Loading screen
- Branding bar
- Banners
- Live button
Ad Networks
Common on the Web, these services dynamically place ads into designated spots on a page or in an app. mag+ offers support for various dynamic ad services like AdMarvel and AdMob. This way, publishers are able to separate ad sales from content so as to monetize the number of views.
Monetize with mag+
Having several options to create and display ads, mag+ helps publishers achieve high ROI. Perfect for monetizing your apps without having an impact on published content, get started, and add customized ad solutions.