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Bauer Media Group to launch companion mobile apps in bid to grow masthead sales

Gourmet_Traveller_ipad_1_mumbrellaThe Bauer Media Group is to launch a range of free and paid-for digital apps which will draw from and sit alongside its major mastheads in a bid to draw additional audiences to its magazine brands.

A companion app to Gourmet Traveller magazine will be the first to launch in May, and will be available to buy in the lower tier of app prices. It will use content from the magazine but sit alongside it, providing cross-platform promotion for the brand.

Marcelo Silva, head of mobile at Bauer, said the bundled content strategy is a first for the publisher, and has been developed as a bid to elevate the publisher’s position in the crowded digital marketplace.

He told Mumbrella: “Consumers are really discerning now and they are really in charge of when they want content and how they will pay for it, which is a big shift for us because we are a traditional linear magazine.

“We need to educate and bring the business along for the journey, and the landscape has shifted considerably. These are the sort of things we need to consider to do business and to build sustainable long term businesses.”

Silva said the apps present an opportunity to grow the business and a total of 15 will be rolled out over the next six months in relation to ten of Bauer’s magazine mastheads, across sport, leisure and lifestyle and other brands.

“Given that we have the opportunity to bring incremental audiences in with various offerings so I think the opportunity is there to be taken,” he told Mumbrella.

Silva joined Bauer in early October and is the company’s first head of mobile. He was previously the head of interactive for Turner Broadcasting and has also worked with GroupM, Yahoo, and was head of marketing for PayPal as it launched in Australia.

Over the last six months he has led research into mobile consumption habits for Bauer to understand when and how key demographics of men and women consume media on various devices and what they are willing to pay for.

Key learnings include the high amount of content is discovered by consumers via social media sites, and measured consumer thresholds for paying for content, Silva said.

Bauer Media has been publishing digital magazines since 2010 and has 41 mastheads published in digital formats, accessible via a pay subscription model.

Silva said the publisher chose to develop the apps both by looking at what magazine titles they wanted to push, and what their readers are looking for.

“We need to be extremely conscious that anything we put out in the market has to be consumer centric,” he said. “That’s the biggest shift in publishing in the digital online world, that you have to be careful because the competition is not only local, its global, and where would your offerings sit within that competitive landscape.”

Megan Reynolds

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