Sci-Fi Much?

Magazines and Advertising are being adapted to function well together in the future! This is mainly due to the release of tablet devices, where the two industries can come together to create an extremely interactive and engaging product!

As they do now, Ads and Magazines will go hand in hand in the future. This has a lot to do with media convergence taking place at the moment. In the upcoming years we are going to be seeing the introduction of a lot more tablet device. We already have technology such as the iPAd (which came out recently), and the Norton Ink Adam, but these are just the beginning. For more information on the future of tablet technology, there is an interesting post on TechRadar.

Magazines will be released more and more as content available for tablet devices, which publishers are especially looking forward to, as this has already been tested and proven to be a success with iPhone apps. For publishers, this is extremely efficient, as it means there will be less printing, and they’ll have the potential to make more profit. A package offering a magazine-like experience mixed with the interactivity of being online has a high market value.

This also opens up a new way of advertising in magazines. As of now, the only forms of advertisements featured in magazines are still images printed on paper. However, with tablet devices around it’s easy to advertise using video, as well as images, whilst still making the magazine have a different feel than if it were being viewed online, on a website. A review on tablet technology in regards to the future of magazines explains further here.

Ads will also be made to use message customisation. They will, and are already starting to obtain information about their audience/viewers which can then be used in order to adapt or change the message they are transmitting. One example, according to Doshdosh.com, is that there are already billboards in development which have cameras in them. These cameras forward the images they record to a computer that can 85% of the time accurately identify the gender of the person looking at them. The billboard will then change its content to display something to advertise for that specific audience.

**FUSION MAGAZINE** - Creative Business IDea

Fusion magazine is a 'User Submitted Magazine'.

In a world where the popularity and effectiveness of magazines is governed by the people that read them, it only makes sense to have a magazine which is entirely put together by 'the people'. The way the magazine works is it has a website where a new theme will be announced for every new issue. Upon this announcement, people or companies can start discussions on topics related to the theme. When these topics are posted, the ones that receive the most attention and discussion/comments will be written about in the magazine.

This makes the magazine appeal to almost any audience, as it is focused on the ideas that everyone has thought about and submitted. It is also a good way to make the magazine industry more of an active form of entertainment, instead of it just being about passive reading.

Magazine Sovereignty

Every magazine is undoubtedly produced by a Publisher, just as a film is by a studio. In the UK, there are several publishing conglomerates which own and represent most of the magazines we see around us each and every day!

Here is a list of the main magazine publishing conglomerates in the UK, and the amount of circulation per issue they produced on average in 2009. The information was taken from an article out of the Guardian, and can be found here.

IPC Media

Total average circulation per issue: 7.49m

Bauer Media:

Total average circulation per issue: 4.17m

BBC Worldwide

Total average circulation per issue: 3.8m

The National Magazine Company:

Total average circulation per issue: 3.49m

Future Publishing:

Total average circulation per issue: 1.56m

Condé Nast

Total average circulation per issue: 1.63m

From this information, it can be deduced that the conglomerate which controls more of the industry is the one that circulates the most per issue. But, that also depends on how many magazines each conglomerate owns. In an Industry such as the magazine industry, where a lot of the success of the media produced is based upon an audience's reaction to it, the popularity of each magazine can also influence the amount of control a publishing conglomerate has in the industry.