Dave Weinberg, Adobe Solutions Consultant, says that newspaper and magazine apps for tablets offer a bridge between the print world and the digital world.
“It’s a crazy time in the publishing world. People are wondering how they can build a bridge to the future when they still have to meet daily deadlines,” Weinberg told the audience at his INK+BEYOND presentation ‘Adobe and You: Changing the World through Digital Experiences.’ “We’re making the tools available for bridge-building.”
Before Wired magazine released the first magazine edition made for tablet in 2003, publishers were taking the print edition and “just throwing it online,” said Weinberg. With the interactive possibilities tablets offer, Weinberg explained that print organizations are now “re-envisioning the space between print and web.”
“We’re entering a new golden age of content development,” he said. “This is where the next wave is coming from.”
Weinberg noted that the main challenges publishers face are reaching customers and managing costs while ad revenues are shrinking. Tablet editions of print works solve these problems by opening up new possibilities for selling content and ads.
According to Weinberg’s statistics, tablet users are spending 21 percent more per purchase than any other online consumers.
“Consumers are soaking it up and running with it,” Weinberg said.
Weinberg showcased Adobe’s new products which allow publishers to incorporate unique, interesting content into their tablet editions. The new ‘.folio’ files can include video, slideshows, audio, pan and zoom, and image sequences. “This is a broad new palette for the digital experience,” he said.
Another interesting feature of ‘.folio’ files is their ability to integrate live feeds, so that breaking news can appear alongside longer articles in publications.
Weinberg says that tablet apps encourage advertisers because, unlike websites, they allow ads to take up full pages in digital publications. Additionally, hyperlinks on ads can send readers directly to online shopping, and built-in web analytic tools that provide feedback on how users engage with the content.
This type of technology helps publishers “find their way back from feeling disenfranchised by the web.”
