Publishing tech startup, e-Mersion Media is on a quest to save the magazine format, or at least usher the medium into the digital era.
COVID-19 has accelerated the long term demise of print media, with industry expenditure forecasts showing spending on newspaper advertisements shrinking by 21 per cent globally this year, with magazines dropping 20 per cent.
Meanwhile digital advertising is set to account for 51 per cent of global ad-spend in 2021, up from the 49.5 per cent forecast last December.
Chief Commercial Officer, Christopher Styring, believes e-Mersion Media’s platforms can bring the magazine format into the digital realm, using technology to help publishers enhance content, build engagement and attract advertisers.
“Our platforms are not designed to replace websites or social media for that matter, this is a multimedia publishing platform,” Styring says.
“Importantly, we understand that people still love magazines, but sadly magazines have been going under and publishing houses have been under tremendous pressure and we’ve seen some great titles go in recent times, which is a great shame”
Styring says the advent of social media has provided companies with more targeted advertising options than print titles can offer, which has up-ended the traditional publishing revenue model.
“The distribution and penetration of magazines has suffered and subsequently the disruption of the commercial model has made it very difficult to keep magazines running,” he says.
“But what we’ve also found is that people do love magazines, and they still want the user experience of a magazine.
“Our solution really takes the best of both worlds. When you look at our platform, the digital magazine immersion format still behaves like a magazine, the page turns beautifully, you can go back and forth from page to page, from left to right, right to left.
“The articles still read and look like a cover page layout, so it’s not a website as such, it is a digital magazine in the truest sense, but with all of those beautiful extra engagement layers of trackability, rich metrics around reader behaviour, interactive ads, and multimedia in terms of sound sight, vision and motion.”
Styring believes there is a fast growing market for publishing companies that can present high quality media in the digital realm, offering strong between commercial synergies.
e-Mersion Media recently entered into a global partnership with Retail inMotion, a multinational provider of retail and technology solutions for global airlines.