With the new iPad now released here in Australia on Friday 28th May, we were always going to see a rush of new applications!
We have spoken before about magazines on the iPad, and the new industry we called magazining.
Amongst the early adopters, the magazine that seems to be generating the most interest on the iPad, is WIRED magazine. It kinda make sense: this long standing tech magazine should be something worth reading on the new iPad? Here’s what we found:
The new WIRED app for the iPad has the following enhancements:-
- Every page in the issue is individually designed for optimal viewing on the iPad screen in both portrait or landscape orientation.
- Navigation from the cover, which allows readers to touch cover lines and go directly to stories, giving direct access to editorial content.
- Content organized in vertical stacks rather than magazine-like spreads.
- Design cues throughout that lead the reader through the issue, augmenting the scroll bar with subtle indications of more content and additional features to explore.
- Drop down Table of Contents (TOC) and Browse view (zoomed out view of stacks of content) make for easy navigation and sense of place within the issue.
- Orientation-appropriate photography offers different images taking advantage of layout changes whether in portrait or landscape mode.
- Animated 360° images show readers every side of Iron Man and let them explore the history of Mars landings.
- Unique slide shows take readers through multiple views using touch for image progression.
- Four editorial videos including an exclusive clip from Toy Story 3. All video is embedded into the app allowing for automatic load, display in HD and access without a connection.
- Music to enhance story telling, including an exclusive listen inside Trent Reznor’s recording studio.
What makes WIRED magazine so impressive, is the way they use multi-media to get the message across, and provide unique content for readers. For once, a reader who subscribes to WIRED magazine on the iPad gets content which is different than that in the newsstand version of the magazine. What is also surprising, is the story behind how wide the iPad is published.
The publishers of WIRED use a custom developed Adobe product to produce the print version of the magazine. Conveniently, the very same customized Adobe product is also being used to produce the iPad version of the magazine. What this means for the publishers, is that they can produce two versions of the magazine effectively from the very same platform. Magazine publishers, in general, will fast be running out of excuses to NOT have an iPad version of their magazine!
Having now experimented with several magazines on the iPad, the one thing we are noticing is the quality of the advertising (or lack thereof).
Everyone initially commented that the iPad would represent new opportunities for advertisers. Certainly, advertisements in full HD and colour with nice images do look good on the iPad. However, unlike the way you interact with a magazine, we have seen little to no innovation in advertising on the iPad.
WIRED are claiming new innovations in advertising on the iPad version, but it was not overly obvious to us? And herein lies an opportunity.
The richness, and the level of engagement of magazines on the iPad should mean that advertisers and agencies have an open field experimenting with new ways of getting their messages across. At Seggr we believe there is an opportunity to narrate more engaging stories and make use of techniques such as branded entertainment to get close to readers.
WIRED Magazine for the iPad is no different, the way the content is presented is unique and groundbreaking, but it’s full of bog standard ads. Not one of these advertisements are very imaginative – at most they only effectively take advantage of the bright 10 inch display on the iPad.
Come on advertisers the iPad represents an amazing opportunity to actually engage and entertain your readers.
