The Publishing Group of America has teamed up with DMD Mobile Holdings Inc. to offer pay-per-use mobile content to readers of print magazines American Profile and Relish.
Mobile content available from Relish, a food-focused monthly, includes recipes as well as searchable recipes on demand.
The American Profile text service offers facts on demand and weekly tidbits about the 50 states. American Profile, which describes itself as “a magazine that celebrates the hometown spirit” is also experimenting with texting Bible verses and horoscopes.
“As we looked at the different things that we were offering to our readers – cookbooks and CDs and other products – we just saw that moving in the whole mobile area is something that’s really big,” said Steve Minucci, director of business development at PGA.
Minucci declined to say how many subscribers the text service had aggregated since launching in May but intimated that subscription levels were higher than expected.
There are no advertisers affiliated with the service yet, but Minucci said PGA was “in talks” with advertisers and possible sponsors, particularly for the recipe service. He said they were also considering offering a wine-pairing tool, sponsored by wine companies, with recipe texts.
The text services from each magazine must be subscribed to separately and each costs $9.99 per month. Readers sign on by texting codes printed in banner ads in the print magazines. They are then sent a confirmation text that explains that the charges will be added to their cell phone bills.
PGA had no prior business relationship to DMD, which provides the text service and the infrastructure. The Franklin, TN-based publisher plans to build its mobile offerings with reader polls and celebrity news in the future.
American Profile and Relish both have circulation rates of 9 million. American Profile is distributed weekly via newspapers across the country, and Relish is a monthly. A full-page ad in Relish costs $372,060.
