By John Herrman

I'm Still Waiting for a Great iPad Magazine

With the new Wired app, Conde Nast has built, unequivocally, the best magazine for the iPad. And yet I find myself asking, is this it? And will it cost this much?

I love Wired. I love magazines. But with the launch of the magazine app, Wired's much-previewed, profoundly hyped and unexpectedly controversial claim on the future of the magazine, the uneasiness, and the pit in my stomach that I felt during the first wave of iPad magazines—dominated by PopSci's ambitious re-imagining of the title, but comprised mostly of blatant halfassery—has only grown deeper.

Consider the facts:

• Wired's app is $5. I could buy a subscription to the magazine, for a year, for around $10. A year of Wired purchased from the App Store would cost $60. Conde is apparently working on a unified pricing scheme across print and digital for the New Yorker, so maybe it'll filter over to Wired? Who knows. I know it must have cost a ton to develop this thing, but readers don't care about that: They care about the words. These words cost too much. (Also, it's not like this magazine doesn't have ads. It's got a fucking ton of ads.)

• It's over 500MB. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are lovely, and the videos look great. But in the time it took me to download and install this app on my iPad, I was able to walk to a bodega, take out cash at an ATM, get a cup of coffee, come home, and send a few emails. Hell, I could have picked up a copy of Wired while I was out; I spotted a few copies in a stand next to the counter. (Last month's issue, but still.)

• It's still quite obviously a magazine. It may seem like a fine distinction, but with this app Wired hasn't reinvented the magazine, they've just reinvented Wired. Wired's graphic design is legendary, and I'd hate to see it sacrificed for the iPad app. But some of these magazine conventions don't really work—in this app, I never feel like I've truly tucked into an article, as I do with the print edition, or even an Instapaper bookmark. PopSci had this problem, too, and it's worrying that none of the mag world's stars have figured out what to do with it. (Interestingly, the best handling of long-form writing I've seen in an iPad app came from Vanity Fair, which is published by the same company as Wired.)

• The little things! For example, you can't copy and paste, or share an article. (Some of this is coming in the future, apparently.)

And then, well, there's the experience, the look, the feel—there's the app itself. We saw the demos before launch, in Wired Reader, and we gushed. Rightfully! Even watching them now, I'm impressed. But in my hand, it's... emotionally underwhelming? Visually overwhelming? I don't know. It doesn't really click—the layout and design are to my eye impeccable, and the interactive infographics are objectively impressive, but I find myself wishing for a web page, some flat text, or something.

But man, those early demos! Magazines were going to be interactive, y'know? There was much talk of the future, of revolution. And following the buzz, there was execution. This is that app, minus about, dunno, 15 experiential percent?

The video, the diagrams, the interactivity—it's all here, but in my hands, it doesn't capture the magic it had before, on that video, and more importantly, in our eager imaginations. Wired didn't break their promise; we just bought too far into it.

Wired's app is a broad step toward the ideal of an interactive app. Sure, it's a pain to swipe through all those ads—I don't know why digital mags should adhere to the same ad conventions as paper ones—and there's still a lot of tuning to be done, but I guess I see what they're going for, vaguely. It's attractive and flashy, impressive, but expensive. It's aspirational.

The alternative ideal for digital magazines is a stripped-back approach—either scanned PDFs, or near-bare OCR scans of the current issues, more or less like web content. These cost very little to make, so—and this is why I call it an ideal—publishers could give readers their entire archives, on tap, for almost nothing. But that's only attractive for a certain category of readerly, word-heavy magazines, and again, it's unclear how you'd sell that, either: Is it a bonus to the regular mag? A separate subscription?

These aren't new questions—they're the same ones that more cynical observers have been asking since the first eruptions of iPad hype around the press. It's just that with Wired, the uber mag app, they still haven't been answered. [Wired]

For the first time, Google has announced the commission it takes when paying publishers who run their ads and it is a lot higher than had been estimated - in some cases up to 49%. To put this in perspective, Mediabids is the only company running a pay-for-response program in print of any size and the commissions we take are, in most cases 10%, or less.

From MediaBuyerPlanner.com - full story here

Google Reveals Revenue Split with AdSense Publishers

Google has announced the revenue split it gives to AdSense publishers for its two main AdSense products, AdSense for content and AdSense for search. Until now, the small publishers who use Google’s self-serve AdSense products had no idea how Google was sharing the revenue pie.

AdSense for content publishers, who make up the vast majority of Google’s AdSense publishers, earn a 68% revenue share worldwide, Google says, clarifying: “This means we pay 68% of the revenue that we collect from advertisers for AdSense content for content ads that appear on your sites.”

The portion Google keeps represents the company’s continued investment in AdSense, including the development of new technologies, products and features. It also reflects the costs Google incurs. Since launching AdSense for content in 2003, this revenue share has never changed.

AdSense for search partners receive a 51% revenue share, worldwide, for the search ads that appear through their implementations. As with AdSense for content, the proportion of revenue that Google keeps reflects its costs, “including the significant expense, research and development involved in building and enhancing our core search and AdWords technologies.” The AdSense for search revenue share has remained the same since 2005, when Google increased it.

Search Engine Land points out that the split disclosed is for self-serve AdSense publishers rather than big publishers who work directly with Google. Those ad deals would have different splits, depending on the publisher, Google says. Bigger publishers are rumored to get bigger shares.

Google said it will not share the revenue split for publishers who use AdSense for mobile apps, feeds or games, because the company is still learning about how much it costs the company to deliver those types of ads. Google says it may divulge those splits at a later date.

Mediabids' mention in Niche Magazine's "Niched Out" Newsletter. Available here

SUCCESS STORY OF THE MONTH

Rapid River Arts & Culture Flourishes with Mediabids Rapid River Arts and Culture magazine has used Mediabids Per-Inquiry advertising for several years. According to Publisher Dennis Ray, the ads themselves helped make the magazine look more successful, full, and professional, while helping them track readers’ needs by the types of ads they most respond to and when. Per-inquiry advertising enables Rapid River Arts and Culture to run ads from national advertisers and get paid based on the response the ad generates in their magazine; payouts currently range from $6 per call to $900 a sale. The companies Mediabids Per-Inquiry advertising has are well-known, well-respected national businesses. Dennis has even received emails from readers thanking him for bringing to their attention a product or service they found through a Mediabids ad. He likes their customer service, too - a check from Mediabids Per-Inquiry had gotten ripped in half in the mail and they had a replacement check in a couple days. "I have only positive things to say about Mediabids Per-Inquiry advertising and their staff," he says.

 From MediaPost. 

An average 74 million people visited a newspaper Web site each month in the third quarter of 2009, equaling just under 40% of all active U.S. Internet users, according to the Newspaper Association of America, citing research performed by Nielsen Online.

This is the most unique visitors recorded since the NAA and Nielsen began tracking newspaper Web site audiences in 2004; the previous record was 73.3 million in the first quarter of 2009.

Although year-over-year comparisons are difficult because of a big increase in Nielsen's panel size in June, the active-reach figure appears to be remaining stable, as newspaper Web sites have hovered around 40% for the last two years. 

Full story here.

From Print In the Mix:

A new National Newspaper Association (NNA) survey finds that 81% of respondents read a local weekly paper each week.  NNA is the national organization for community newspapers (often referred to as "weeklies").

• Nearly half (47%) say they read the newspaper as much for the ads as for the news.

• 73% read "most or all of it," and those readers spend an average of 40 minutes with the paper.

• Readers, on average, share their paper with 2.36 additional readers.

• Nearly 40% keep their community newspaper more than a week.

• Three-quarters of readers read local news "often to very often" in their community newspaper, while 53% say they never read local news online.  Only 12% say they read local news "often to very often" online.
  
  
• Among those going online for local news, 63% find it on the local newspaper's website, compared to 17% for sites such as Google, and 12% from the website of a local TV station.

• 30% of respondents do not have home Internet access.

   Full story here
  

From MediaWeek. Full Story Here. But don't get too excited, if you are in print.

Broadcast TV will reap the lion’s share at $2.2 billion or 67 percent of the total, with $2 billion going to local TV, $150 million to cable and $50 million to network TV. Direct mail will get $650 million or 20 percent of the ad spend, followed by radio at $250 million or 8 percent, and newspaper at $95 million or 3 percent. Outdoor and the Internet are forecast to reach $55 million and $50 million, respectively.

Here is more:

"Political advertising will hit $3.3 billion in 2010, an 11 percent increase over 2008 (but a 4 percent decrease from 2006), according to a Wells Fargo Securities report released Wednesday (Oct. 21).

The ad windfall, more than 60 percent of which will go to local TV, will be fueled by the election of 37 governors, 38 senators, every member of the House of Representatives and issue advertising (which could approach $1 billion) on hot-button issues such as health care.

The factors affecting the 2010 forecast are similar to those that made 2006 ad spend of $3.4 billion a record year for political advertising."