5 Reasons Advertising In A Digital Edition Makes Sense

Matt Clement

Written by Matt Clement

October 23, 2018

The landscape of digital advertising is currently muddled. Many times, advertisers are unsure if they are receiving true engagement and making an impact with their marketing spend.

Additionally, it seems that a story of advertising fraud or a major miscue pops up on a monthly basis. In the midst of a questionable marketing environment, brands and agencies are running to safe havens such as digital editions.

Here we’ll look at five key reasons why the digital edition medium is making sense for advertisers.

Deeper Engagement

The amount of media we take in is truly astounding. We are pounded to the tune of 5,000 ads and 100,000 words per day. It is as if our minds and the minds of our target audiences are living in the overwhelming atmosphere of Times Square, all the time.

A digital edition is one of the cleanest ways to cut through the clutter, as it provides the deep, curated feel of print in a digital format. This pulls the reader into an experience that allows them to focus on advertising (as well as content) for long periods of time.

Pulling together an average for all our books, readers engaged for 7 minutes and 29 seconds per visit last year.  This is more than seven times the per-visit average for a typical website. Ads on digital edition platforms gain far deeper engagement than on a website as well.

Locking In Brand Safety

Additionally, many times advertising on a website involves using programmatic means. Brands often give up control over where their ads are placed. If ads are located next to questionable content (or before a dubious video) this can lead to devastating losses of revenue and potentially the destruction of a company’s brand. Brand safety has become a buzzword in the marketing world over the past year and for good reason.

A recent AdAge article stated that in 2017, as a result of ads being placed beside questionable content, JPMorgan Chase cut the number of sites it advertised on from 400,000 to 5,000 a month. Additionally, P&G slashed its digital ad spending by $140 million over similar concerns. Advertisers are demanding the right to know exactly where their content is going. This helps them retain the peace of mind that their brand will keep the reputation they’ve worked so hard to build.

Digital editions give this peace of mind. There truly are no surprises. It’s clear. It’s clean. Digital edition advertising add-ons such as pop-ups, slideshows, embedded videos, and animations are all clearly outlined through a digital edition media kit. Additionally, these publications go through a staging process so that an advertiser has the opportunity to know exactly where ads are going and how they will look.

Blocking The Blockers

Another major struggle for advertisers (and consequently publishers) is ad blocking software. Looking at statistics for last year, publishing think tank Media Post stated the following, “Internationally, the loss of publisher revenue from ad blocking rose to $42 billion in 2017 — up from $28 billion the year before”. Additionally, the article states that the use of ad blockers “has jumped to 26% of consumers up from 22% in 2016”. This is an obstacle that publishers must overcome if they are going to count on ads as a consistent source of revenue.

While we can’t speak to all digital editions, Nxtbook Media’s two main platforms, nxtbook4 and PageRaft, as well as our apps are immune to ad blocking software. With the ability to navigate around this software, our solutions provide a chance to reverse the trend of declining revenues due to readers not seeing and interacting with ads.

Highly Personalized Marketing Opportunities

Personalization is another key piece of the puzzle when it comes to advertising today.  From social media to video and websites, creating personalized experiences both visually and messaging-wise has become more important than ever. According to a recent Epsilon research study of 1,000 consumers ages 18-64, “the appeal for personalization is high, with 80% of respondents indicating they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences and 90% indicating that they find personalization appealing”.

Digital edition experiences allow for the creation of hyper-focused publications that reach audiences by location, interest, and a myriad of other parameters. These then allow a pathway for super targeted (and personalized) advertising which can leverage maximum engagement and ROI.

A Natural Fit for Native

Finally, native advertising is a vital piece of reaching consumers in our day in age. Audiences are becoming adverse to all the noise and traditional “salesy” advertising.  They are learning to spot ads and skip over them, whether that be on a website, social media, or before a video. The ads that are making the greatest impact are the ones that contextually meet the form in which they are placed, hence not pulling the reader out of the content they wish to consume.

The research group, Emarketer, had this to say regarding native advertising, “In 2018, 58.3% of US digital display spending will be for native placements, which match the form, function, and feel of the content in which they appear. That’s up from 54.0% in 2017”.  Many advertisers are so bold as to say that non-native advertising will be gone within the next decade.

Digital editions thankfully provide a natural avenue for the form.  A digital page can flip to an article that is written or sponsored by an advertiser and has the same look and feel of the overall digital publication, there’s no need to go to a special section of a website or have the “sponsored” tag as the individual is served the social media ad. The switchover to advertising space from normal content can be incredibly clean.

Tying It All Together

The ability to create a program that meets the current needs of advertisers is perfectly reachable in a digital edition, ultimately benefiting their bottom line. Taken in as a whole, digital editions provide a cool drink of water for the wearied digital advertiser as well as the overwhelmed consumer.

About Nxtbook Media: Knowing that grabbing and retaining audiences is a major issue in our day in age, Nxtbook Media creates attractive, top of the line, digital publishing platforms that entice readers to engage deeply with your content and return for more. Through our digital experiences, readers will have the opportunity to fall in love with your content. This will, of course, help your team to march towards success through advertising sales and subscription models.

We invite you to check out the amazing work we have done with just one of our clients, Virgin Media. We have helped one of their publications, Play Magazine, triple unique visitors, and win the prestigious award for Best Integrated Marketing Campaign from the Content Marketing Institute.

Related Posts

Excellence

40+ Awards

Consistently ranked in the top 10 best places to work in PA, and ranked nationally in the Top 101 Best and Brightest Companies.

Experience

100,000+

Nxtbook Media has supported more than 100K projects... and counting.

Trust

7.5 Years

Our top clients have been with us for an average of 7.5 years.

Back to Top