Time Inc. value magazine All You turned a new contemporary page by implementing ShopAdvisor technology to allow tablet readers to purchase items featured in the publication.
All You Deputy Editor George Kimmerling says many of the shopping brand’s budget-conscious readers, who are primarily female, flip through the print publication in front of a computer to hunt for deals on featured products. But after conducting a study last March, All You discovered that its readers were also bargain hunting in other channels. According to the study, 61% of respondents, all women, said they use their smartphone or tablet for price comparison. To create more seamless shopping experiences for its readers, and to provide a way for readers to bring All You with them when shopping in-store, the magazine launched its “Shop Now” app in its May issue.
“Not everyone is going to be carrying your magazine around,” Kimmerling says. “I do think that more and more, [magazines] are going to look for increased ways to be valuable to their readers and not be left at home or on the coffee table. We want to travel with readers because they’re an increasingly mobile group [and] we want to be the content that they take.”
For every page in the tablet edition that features products, whether in an advertisement or editorial, there’s a button that, when clicked, provides a list of the products on that page and links to all the places they can be purchased; hence providing a “natural environment” for readers to look for deals right in the magazine, Kimmerling says. If readers would rather refrain from making an impulsive buy, they can sign up to receive email notifications that alert them when the price of an item has dropped. Scott Cooper, CEO of purchase platform provider ShopAdvisor, says this creates “the digital equivalent of dog-earing” a page.
And while Kimmerling says that All You isn’t getting a slice of the revenue generated from the product sales, All You’s brand extension is driving deeper engagement. In general, a reader will linger on a tablet magazine’s ad page for an average of five to 10 seconds, Cooper says. However, he says ShopAdvisor’s clients have seen an average linger time of two-and-a-half minutes per ad page.
“[They] interact with the brand substantially longer because they’re shopping, looking at the products, reading more, and learning more,” Cooper says.
Kimmerling adds that delivering multichannel experiences is crucial for publications today.
“I can’t emphasize it enough,” he says. “We need to have the content wherever people are. And as a shopping brand, if people really are using tablets and smartphones as much as we think they are specifically to shop, do price comparison, and seek out deals, and get coupons to those devices, then we need to be providing that from the edit side, as well, and give them content in the way that they can use it on every device that they want to use.”
