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Digital editions – they’ve been around for well over 15 years now and have played a major role in taking publications into the digital era. Unfortunately, many publishers have placed them in a box as a tool without value to advertisers. Here at Nxtbook Media, we work with content creators day in and day out who currently rely on advertising sales through digital editions to drive solid business models. In an era where highly targeted marketing to specific audiences, brand safety, immunity to adblockers, and sponsored content are essential pieces of quality advertising, it seems digital editions provide a reliable channel that meets the needs of many brands and agencies.
To understand the value of this medium, we asked our current clients to anonymously indicate their digital edition circulation as well as the amount they charge for quarter-page, half-page, and full-page advertisements solely in their digital editions. We then took this data and broke down the value of these three sizes of ads into CPM (cost per thousand impressions). The analysis produced the following average CPM rates:
We then sought to demonstrate the ROI of digital editions among a randomly selected group of B2B, B2C, travel, association, and technical journal publications in our nxtbook4 and PageRaft platforms. In order to get to this ROI figure we applied the following calculation to each size ad (¼ page, ½ page, and full page):
After calculating the ROI, we then added up the ad revenue for each ad size in order to get a total ad revenue per publication figure. Costs were calculated based on the average digital edition production costs for the randomly selected publication. ROI was then calculated as follows. The results were impressive, to say the least!
You can see an outlay of the ROI figures in the bar chart below:
The numbers are quite astonishing, as the publication with the lowest ROI, a very advertising-lite technical journal, is still receiving $4.68 in return for every dollar spent on the production of a digital edition. Fascinatingly for the randomly selected, and advertising heavy B2B publisher, it is projected that for every dollar put towards creating a digital edition of their magazine, the company will generate $130.73. Granted, these numbers only take into account production costs and leave out other expenses – such as design, marketing, and advertising sales – but those costs can often be mitigated as more publications are created or as your digital edition is used as part of a multiplatform strategy that includes a website or print.
ROI on advertising is only part of the financial story though when it comes to digital editions. That said, in this series reexamining the value of digital editions, we’ll examine the savings that could be gained through moving percentages of your audience from a print subscription to a digital one. But first, we'll get to the meat and potatoes of why advertising in a digital edition makes sense for advertisers. The insights are easy to digest and intriguingly clear.