links for 2007-03-30

• ACCM Show – 24th Annual Conference ● May 21-23, 2007 – Page 1
  This year’s ACCM Catalog shows a custom background color and a “register now” button on the tool bar.
  (tags: custom+background custom+toolbar)
• BevMo! – Beverages & Mores/Spirits January 2007
  embedded product links
  (tags: catalog embedded-links background)

The Future of Custom Media?

Is custom media the future of marketing? This great article in Penton’s B2B Marketing Trends seems to think so.

(Also notice the cool “Subscribe” button being used to sign up interested readers!)

CASE STUDY – Information Today – Creating a hybrid media reading experience

NOTE: This case study is excerpted from the 2008 Gilbane Report.

Information Today, Inc. is a leading publisher and conference organizer in the information and knowledge management industries. The company is widely known as the publisher of premier information and knowledge management titles such as EContent, EMedia, Information Today, Searcher, ONLINE, Computers in Libraries, CRM, and KMWorld. Bob Fernekees is Vice-president-Group Publisher for Information Today. His knowledge of high value digital content has been an essential ingredient in the transition from a print to hybrid media environment.

Streaming Media magazine is a quarterly resource for executives and technology managers who use online video and audio for both business communication and delivery of consumer content. Each issue of Streaming Media magazine focuses on a special theme and every issue offers must-read features, commentary, and reviews for readers in all markets. Streaming Media magazine is distributed in both print and digital editions. Written and edited by industry practitioners, experienced users, and streaming business experts, Streaming Media magazine is the trusted resource for organizations investing in enterprise, news/entertainment, and education applications for streaming and other digital media.

Online audio and video are now the delivery method of choice for both business and consumer content, and Streaming Media magazine covers the processes, products, and services that make it happen. Streamingmedia.com is the number one online destination for professionals seeking industry news, information, articles, directories, and services. The site features thousands of original articles, hundreds of hours of audio/video content, weekly newsletters read by more than 40,000 subscribers, and a wide range of services and resources dedicated to the streaming media industry. Streaming Media’s aim is to
supply the community and those corporations implementing the technology with unparalleled information online.

The Challenge
The Information Today management team set the specific goal to moving subscribers from print media to a hybrid print and digital reading experience. Their publications are free and targeted towards groups of readers with specific professional interests. Creating the richest reading experience helps readers connect with their content more often and for longer periods of time. This helps them to generate additional advertising
dollars.

Meeting the Challenge
Information Today has 12 magazines. Streaming Media is at the forefront of their digital publishing initiative and is the publication that most often experiments with new digital functionality. The team selected Nxtbook because of the ease of deploying digital editions and the very strong support for rich media. They like the Nxtbook business model and find them to be excellent publishing partners.

Results

• They have had success in lining up sponsors for specific issues, including a newsletter promoting the digital issue.
• Because of their name and industry focus, Streaming Media advertisers and authors incorporate high-quality rich media. These links give some excellent examples of rich media in action:

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0407/,
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/NXTbook/bestofnxtbook/index.php?startpage=32,
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/NXTbook/pubrecguide/index.php?startpage=14

• The associated Web site has lots of video, audio, and flash and is very well coordinated with the magazine and conferences. All aspects of the brand attract more people to the community and help sell more advertising and conference registrations.
• Their media kit is totally digital. The sales team likes to be able to demonstrate where the ad placement will be and to show typical digital ad performance data.
• Advertisers love the tangibility provided by Nxtbook’s reader statistics package.
• They now attribute 70% of their revenues to digital publishing efforts.

Lessons Learned

• They prefer to provide both print and digital editions to all subscribers. The digital edition offers faster delivery of content and better searchability and linking, and is more vivid because of the rich media content and advertisements.
• The print edition is the physical presence that provides credibility for the publication. Readers still like to browse the printed edition.
• They experimented with online communities but had only modest success. The popularity of their conferences suggests that community is an important part of their franchise and they plan to try another set of online communities in the near future.
• Their publications are all free, so the goal is to generate eyeballs and clicks.

Gilbane Group Conclusions:

• The Information Today team has an outstanding grasp of how to offer a hybrid reading experience for their subscribers and new opportunities for their advertisers.
• Because digital editions are relatively inexpensive to produce, the incremental advertising opportunities and revenues easily justify the additional costs.

 

Protecting Your Copyright….

Some publishers worry that if they open up their content, people could print multiple copies of their material, thereby avoiding paying for copyrighted content. One of the simplest ways to avoid this is by using a simple copyright watermark, which only shows up when pages are printed. Here’s a great example. Just print a few pages and see for yourself.

links for 2007-03-29

• Anthony & Sylvan – Where America Swims – 2007 Catalog – Page 1
  Sample of two sponsorship locations above the NXTbook
  (tags: sponsorship)

Word for the Day – SHOSHMOSIS.

We recently had the good fortune to sponsor a great presentation by Hillary Bressler, an awesome Internet consultant to the travel industry. Afterward, Hillary asked us to convert her presentation to NXTbook format. Inside, you can see how the travel industry can plug into scented web sites and much more. Oh, and if you’re not up to speed with Shoshmosis, click here.

links for 2007-03-23

• Engineering Inc. – March/April 2007
  Very clean example of using Flash to highlight a digital edition sponsorship.
  (tags: sponsorship flash+advertisement)

Fire Up That Video Camera….

When it comes to grabbing the attention of Web surfers, advertising distributed via online video handily outpaces static image ads, according to a new DoubleClick report.

The company studied more than 300 online video ad campaigns placed by more than 130 advertisers between June and September of last year. The bottom line: video is significantly more powerful than most other display formats.

You can read more about the DoubleClick report by going here.

To view cool videos publishers have placed in NXTbooks, go here.

It all Adds Up…

WARNING: GEEK POST THAT ONLY TECH GUYS COULD LOVE

The folks overs at Byte & Switch just published an insightful piece about our new server storage architecture. In the article, one of our top techs (his unofficial title around the office is “Viceroy of IT”) explains the reasons for the change:

Managing the direct attached infrastructure was simply becoming too much of a pain for Nathan Powell, NXTbook’s IT director. The exec explained that he had to constantly rewrite a complex set of PERL scripts for backups on the Dell storage. “It was very unwieldy,” he said, adding that the NAS gateway has freed up one member of his staff from constantly checking on backups.

Kudos to our IT team for figuring out a good plan for our future… In 2006 we had over 250% growth over ‘05 and ‘07 is shaping up to be nearly as strong. Those numbers result in some swiftly moving targets in everything from office pens and pencils on up to server storage. However, we can handle running out of pens. Storage, we can’t.

links for 2007-03-22

• Healthcare IT News – March 2007 – Page 1
  sample of a Tabloid magazine in the NXTbook format
  (tags: tabloid)
• 2007 Official Vermont Vacation Guide – Page 1
  Custom intro page with ability to select the city you want more info on
  (tags: intro)
• EE Times – March 19, 2007 – Page 1
  Tabloid sample
  (tags: tabloid)
• NonProfit Times – March 15, 2007 – Page 1
  Tabloid
  (tags: Tabloid)

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