The Search for Relevance

It’s been an interesting few weeks as some companies that have struggled to find relevance in an increasingly online world have made moves to help themselves.

First up is BPA’s move to allow non-requested digital copies onto audit statements as non-qualified circulation. This was the logical thing to do. While there were some who wanted digital copies added without the "non-qualified" label, that’s really where it belongs. This is a good move – it allows publishers to get some credit while they promote their digital magazine.

Next we have MRI moving toward something like a ratings system for national magazines. Because it’s limited to big national ads, the relevance of such a move is nil for the average niche publisher, but it’s still curious.

But if you’re a Nxtbook customer, truth is that you don’t need MRI to tell advertisers what’s going on. Long ago, we learned that, on average, readers treat a digital magazine like a print magazine. You can take the "eye ball" data as a subset of your readership and let advertisers know what percentage of your readers are reading their ad and how long their staying on the page. That’s far more metrics than you’ll ever see in print.