Ipad & Tablet Digital Magazine Advertising: How to ensure your creative investment is scalable

We have taken our experiences from developing online campaigns, microsite, widgets & apps and the lessons learned by working in those spaces to identify the potential challenges with this new category of advertising.

Scalability & Cost Effective Production:
The most important issue is scalability & cost. We have seen websites that have developed custom ad units that give advertisers a more integrated & flexible way to advertise. The key issue with that model is that there is a very limited use of that custom content anywhere outside that particular site. Additionally the cost of development for these custom units can be high. Add to that the fact that any advertising campaign has a limited shelf life, the end result being this type of advertising creative may not being a cost effective for a brand.

Our approach in developing these in magazine integrated campaigns is always keeping in mind the ability to repurpose or segment elements of each campaign into stand alone units that might exist a microsite for the web, an iphone game, a widget etc.

It is also important that the publishers streamline their ad standards to some degree, so that interactive print ads can be used across multiple publications. The same way print ads are placed for a fashion brand in a number of the women’s fashion magazines across various publishers. We are aware that this is already being addressed by the publishers and companies like Next Issue Media and isn’t a huge concern for us.

The last way we have addressed the production cost issues is by the business structure of our agency. This was a key factor when we formed Built by the Factory. At the end of the day, we are still a boutique digital agency and that becomes a benefit to brands looking to test out this new advertising medium. We have a very lean & mean business with endless resources on an “as needed” bases. We keep our overhead extremely low in order to apply the maximum amount of a clients creative and production budget into the actual work being done for their campaigns. And not to support our infrastructure. By doing this we are able to be very competitive with pricing.

The story behind why we started working on this is very straight forward. We have been working on elements of this independently in our day to day business. This includes designing and building micro-sites, websites, banner ads, iphone apps, social media campaigns and so on. We have already been faced with the limitations of compatibly with the flash micro-sites we have built when it comes to iphones. That will now extend into the iPad market, and has been a topic that has had no lack of attention from the industry. With CS5, HTML5 and Air just to name a few, there is now a slight decrease in the impact of this if approached properly. This will remain true as long as it is kept on the radar as new campaigns are being developed. It was one of those moments of clarity when our designers, programmers collaborated and realized that the ideal space for these integrated ads will be these digital magazines.

The delivery method of these magazines created an opportunity not an obstacle.