Vanity Fair has just unveiled its iPad app with the June issue; now in iTunes, the app offers readers two ways to view it: In vertical mode - that is, by holding the iPad vertically - the magazine is shown with a split screen, with images at the top and text at the bottom. When readers hold the magazine horizontally, the print edition of the magazine is recreated in its entirety.
This is the 'digital interpretation' of the print issue, reports The New York Times. (via MediaBuyerPlanner).
How the Ads Work
Vanity Fair sold ads to six advertisers who designed ads specifically for the digital (vertical) edition of the magazine. These are the only ads that show up in vertical mode. The ads included elements like video - Aveeno included several - while Clinique embedded its Facebook page in an ad. Microsoft’s Bing was another premiere advertiser in the digital edition of Vanity Fair.
The horizontal edition of the magazine on the iPad includes all the advertisers from the print edition. Vanity Fair charged a nominal fee to those advertisers to add links to their ads.
Bells and Whistles
Some editorial features include video, such as the Annie Leibovitz photo shoot of World Cup soccer players. A nav bar works as an interactive table of contents, directing readers to specific stories. And the app can “remember” where a reader stopped reading and returns to that spot when the user returns.
The app costs $4.99 this month - the same as the print magazine - but will run for a dollar less in following months. When the iPad first launched, some magazine readers were vocal about their displeasure that most digital editions cost the same price as print editions of magazines.
Tablet: Better than Phones or PC
Tablets recreate the print reading experience better than mobile phones (too small) or PCs (not portable), but publishers dislike the fact that Apple holds consumer data related to their digital publications, points out paidContent.
Vanity Fair and other magazines working on iPad apps hope that these digital editions will get consumers used to accessing magazines via portable devices so they will be prepared to purchase them when publishers are ready to unveil their own digital newsstand.
In the meantime, publishers have been slightly mollified by the fact that readers of these digital editions are now counted by the Audit Bureau of Circulations as part of a magazine’s total circulation.
Magazine readers seem to be very interested in at least sampling digital versions of print publications. For example, Zinio, a company that offers digital versions of print magazines, said earlier this month that its Magazine Newsstand and Reader was the No. 1 free news app downloaded by iPad owners.
