Apple, Newspapers Reportedly Agree on In-App Subscriptions
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By Eliot Van Buskirk
- September 16, 2010 |
- 3:02 pm |
- Categories: Advertising, Media
Apple is expected to announce a new subscription plan for newspapers that will give publishers access for the first time to subscriber information, Mercury News reports, citing unnamed sources.
The reported concession by Apple would make the process opt-in — meaning that (for example) you could, as a subscriber to a New York Times app, choose to let Apple share your details with the newspaper. But Apple would not by default.
It’s a small but important step in the right direction for publishers, which have not yet set up flocked to iPad despite widespread belief (or hope) that the Apple tablet will be a significant creative and revenue platform for print media. Part of the slow adoption is due to the platform being very new, and unavailable to most developers before it was launched April 3, and part is the 30 percent fee Apple charges for app sales.
But arguably the biggest impediment, according to publishers, is the fact that Apple “owns” the customer relationship, making it difficult to provide potential advertisers with crucial demographic data, and to reach out directly to readers for a host of marketing reasons.
There’s gold in those apps, for those who can mine it. The WSJ’s and Financial Times’ iPad apps reportedly sold strongly well this summer. And following strong sales of Wired Magazine’s iOS app and other positive indicators, the managing director of Conde Nast UK (Conde Nast is the publisher of Wired.com), declared on Wednesday that 15 years from now, 30 to 40 percent of this publisher’s sales revenue will originate on app platforms such as the iPad.
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See Also:
- IPad Apps Could Put Apple in Charge of the News
- Apple Event to Focus on Reinventing Content, Not Tablets
- Apple’s Tablet Could Be Print Industry’s Lifeboat
- Can Apple’s iPad Save the Media After All?
- Wired iPad App Sells 24000 Copies in First 24 Hours
- Wired Reader on the iPad
- Wired Magazine’s iPad Edition Goes Live
- The Wired Tablet App: A Video Demonstration
Photo: Flickr/mightykenny
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