In uncertain times for the print magazine, analytics has given online publications聽a clear聽advantage in the race for eyeballs.
While websites have refined a scientific accuracy over their audience, traditional publishers still rely on sales figures and focus groups.
That is until now.聽Tech firm聽Readly provides an unlimited subscription to聽more than聽4,000 magazine titles through聽its app and聽hopes to give readers more content while providing publishers with the insight they sorely miss.
Its UK chief content officer聽Ranj Begley聽has been with the company since 2014, a year after it was founded.
鈥淲e can tell the whole story – when a person clicks on the first page, what they’re reading, how they鈥檙e reading and for how long. It is phenomenal, the type of stuff that we can do,鈥� Begley, a self-confessed data nerd, told 老九品茶Cloud.
鈥淲e鈥檝e done case studies on whether female covers work better for Psychologies magazine, as opposed to male covers.
鈥淲e鈥檝e tried and tested different covers, while the content within the magazine stays exactly the same.鈥�
Begley, who comes from a print background, is part of a nine-strong UK team, part of the聽75 international employees of the Swedish-founded firm.
The company鈥檚 staff are employed consciously as a mix of people that don’t like magazines as well as people that do 鈥渂ecause we want to know what they don’t like about magazine so we can start making them better鈥�.
Like Spotify, Readly鈥檚 proposition to its customers is unlimited access to magazines; to publishers, it is聽more eyeballs and better reader data which can be put back into future magazine designs.
Revenue for the publications is calculated based on 鈥榙well time鈥�, the amount of time a reader spends inside a magazine.
鈥淲e’re giving publishers additional revenue as part of putting their titles on our platform and growing their brand footprint globally,鈥� said Begley.
The firm recently conducted a case study on Cosmopolitan magazine, during its first issue with plus-sized model Tess Holliday on its cover.
鈥淲e were really interested to find out if people were consuming content in the same way that they would with a physical print copy,鈥� she said.
Consuming in the traditional context, Begley explained, meant picking up the magazine and flicking through the issue to find the cover story.
鈥淭he top read article was obviously about Tess Holliday, and people went into the magazine to read that article before slowly starting to trickle out of the magazine,鈥� she said of the results, just as they do with the real thing.
But despite near identical reader behaviour, Begley said any concerns that Readly could further hinder print titles look unlikely.
鈥淭he overlap between the people that subscribe on the publisher鈥檚 platforms and people that are subscribing on Readly is聽two per cent, and it could even be less than that now.鈥�
Readly is a company interested in increasing readership聽rather than taking magazine readers away from the stands, Begley says.
The firm has its own portfolio meetings, in which some of the team sit with publishers and bring their expertise to demonstrate what they can do better, and what they shouldn’t do as well.
鈥淯sers are reading wider, as opposed to just focusing on what it is that they normally read, so it is about stimulating consumption,鈥� she said.
鈥淸Our users] are people that wanted to read trusted long form or short form curated content. They want a reliable source where they can read it and know that it’s not fake.鈥�
The company is now working on further improvements to user experience, with a focus on mobile, and building out a recomminedation engine, and the ability to search by topic as well as title.
鈥淲e must understand how the publishers run their business, and whether their needs and wants are and where we can help them.
鈥淎nd in the same breath, we need to understand what direction we’re going in as well.鈥�