James Ranson, advertisement director, technology, Future.
The recent ABC announcements have shown encouraging growth when it comes to tablet media. As the platform becomes increasingly crucial to publishers, transparency is vital for agencies’ understanding of its potential.
A publisher’s ability to define and prove value from media selections will ultimately determine which brands, products, and in this case, platforms will be successful and which will be consigned to the media scrapheap. Tablet won’t be one destined to sit in the annals of media history as a failure. Its mass market adoption, ability to fire consumer imagination and its support from most of the world’s major technology manufacturers will, as Gartner and others have predicted time after time, only lead to this type of device going from strength to strength.
T3 decided to audit its interactive digital editions in February independently, while ABC readied to launch its innovative Digital Publications Certificate. In August T3 debuted the new certificate, delivering an average 17,682 interactive tablet editions between January and June 2012 - underlining the brand as the UK’s most successful digital magazine.
Why did we decide to be the first publisher to use ABC’s Digital Publication Certificate? T3’s view on how tablet media should be represented to the wider publishing and advertising world has always been clear - and it’s a view based on transparency, honesty and openness. These three ideals are the most natural approach to any new launch in order to ensure the advertising community engages, understands, tests and adopts quickly, readily and confidently.
From the outset we’ve understood the tablet opportunity as something very different from print or online. It’s a new medium which offers something different and unique, especially in its more sophisticated, fully interactive guise. As such, we’ve always sought to separate out how we offer different sorts of media placements. ABC allows media owners to do this in two ways; differentiating between print replica and interactive editions on the Cross Platform Certificate or on the Digital Publications Certificate - so both clients and agencies can understand what they’re buying without blurring the line.
As the first brand to use the new ABC Digital Publications Certificate, we at Future are hoping to once again move the industry forward in recognising the need for greater transparency. This, we believe, is crucial to declutter the conversation and create a defined way for everyone to calculate exactly what they’re paying for.
The tablet’s uniqueness for advertisers comes from engagement, interaction and time spent building a relationship with a consumer through stunning visuals, touch, sound and orientation. Publications which offer this true interactivity create a very different environment for marketing messages to be consumed.
I look at this new Digital Publications Certificate as another significant piece of the jigsaw now put in place in the already long road to tablet adoption by the industry. Happily our contacts in the media agency world agree, judging by the very positive feedback we’ve received so far.
