ABM’s Executive Forum: Drive recurring revenue

If 2011 ended on a high note for b-to-b advertising across all media, the first half of 2012 indicates a slight slowdown in ad spend (although nothing as bad as many people seem to have feared, with most channels still showing positive growth and ABM’s own BIN numbers showing first half 2012 up over first half 2011). Advertising remains the backbone of much of b-to-b media, but increasingly the value of a company in the b-to-b space is being driven by two factors: the amount of revenue driven by new products and the amount of stable, predictable revenue that can be counted on month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year.

ABM’s 2012 Annual Conference focused on the Customer-Driven Future—turning audience data into understanding and turning audience understanding into action (for videos of Annual Conference presentations, including ABM CEO Clark Pettit’s keynote on “B-to-B Media’s New Journey,” click here). Now ABM’s upcoming Executive Forum, which runs Oct. 21-22 in Chicago, will focus on monetizing that audience. 

Highlights include:

Bloomberg’s take
The event kicks off with Bloomberg chief content officer and BusinessWeek chairman Norm Pearlstine sharing his vision for how content and business information-driven companies can succeed in the age of disruption, from the dramatic reorganization that set Bloomberg on its current path of success to how media companies can capitalize on the opportunity in business information.

Data versus ad dollars
A roundtable discussion featuring Andrew Sollinger, managing director of the Americas for Financial Times, Jeff Killeen, CEO of GlobalSpec and Absolom Kotulski, vice president of strategy and development, McGraw-Hill Commodities and Commercials Markets Division, will debate whether data and business intelligence are worth more than advertising when it comes to revenue, margins, company valuations.

The REAL paid content opportunity: Corporate sales and packages
Paid content has potential but do we really want to trade chasing ad dollars for chasing individual subscribers? Metered models require scale to succeed, while packages old at the corporate level, and licenses for multiple products, offer a high margin, predictable revenue stream. Kevin Worth, CEO of The Deal, will show how the consolidation of multiple paid products into the creation of The Deal Pipeline completely reinvented the franchise as one of the most successful digital paid content models to date. Bill Carter, former vice president of Thomson Reuters and now president of ALM, will share his insights on creating a business information service and selling it on the corporate level.   

Data, data everywhere: now how to get customers to drink?
Every b-to-b media and information company is submerged in data—but not all data is worth the same. Bill Ault, president of Equipment Data Associates (EDP) and Rob Norris, vice president of sales with EDP, will offer a crash course into what executives and “doers” need to know about creating data products for both end-users and advertisers.   

The trifecta of live events, data and marketing services
Live events are the largest revenue stream for many b-to-b players, while data and marketing services are among the biggest opportunities. Benny DiCecca, CEO of Wellesley Information Services, will show how his company is combining all three to grow value for both end-user and marketer alike. 

Creating a community of paying members
Community success—particularly in social media—has been defined by scale. Followers, friends and likes—these are all great from a branding perspective but what if you could create a community that members pay to join? Michael Wolf, vice president at GigaOM and Craig Baxter, managing director of HDI at United Business Media, will share their how they have created communities that people want to pay to be a part of by offering premium content, exclusive research and peer-to-peer networking opportunities, both digitally and face-to-face.

Finding hidden revenue: 10 untapped areas you already own
New products drive revenue but they also require dedicated resources and time to bring to market. But b-to-b companies are already sitting on the data, the content and the audience to drive new revenue streams with little risk. Ed Coburn, publishing director of the media division of Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Mequoda Advisory Board, will show how stepping back and reassessing your portfolio can yield 10 new areas for making money from products you already offer.

Advertisers, we still love you
Advertising is vital—but closing the sale is harder than ever. In “How Premium Data and Information Services Drive Ad Dollars,” Government Executive Media President Tim Hartman and IDG Enterprise CEO Michael Friedenberg will show how going the extra mile with market and customer data drives marketers to boost their spend.

For full information on the event and to register, click here.

By Matt Kinsman

Smaller media companies contain healthcare costs better than big ones do

ABM's Talent Management Committee polled 31 member companies earlier this year, asking for wide-ranging details on the healthcare benefits they offer, from plan types to prescriptions to spousal coverage to wellness programs. A closer look at the data reveals some key differences between the smaller and larger companies surveyed.

Premium Costs: Generally speaking, smaller companies did a better job of containing costs than larger ones. No small companies (under 100 employees) reported costs rising more than 10 percent; about a quarter saw costs rise 5 percent to 10 percent; another quarter saw costs rise 1 percent to 5 percent; and just under half reported decreases in premium costs. Of the large companies (over 250 employees), 45 percent reported premium costs rising more than 10 percent; about 35 percent saw costs rise 1 percent to 10 percent, and 20 percent saw costs actually decrease.

Funding: All small companies (under 100 employees) and 75 percent of medium to large companies (100 to 500 employees) are fully-funded / fully-insured, while 71 percent of the largest ones are self-funded / self-insured.

Plan Management: Smaller companies tend to use an insurance broker, paid on commissions, while larger ones tend to use a benefits consultant, paid a flat fee for service. 

Calendar: All companies under 500 employees report soliciting new plan proposals every year or two. Almost three-quarters of the largest companies do so less frequently. Of those largest companies, 85 percent start their plan year in January. Of the other companies polled, a plurality (about 40 percent) start in January, but most are scattered across the calendar.

The full 50-page report, a members-only PDF, offers benchmarking data on plan types and costs, coverage specifics, dental benefits and more. For more information, visit the ABM Research Reports page or click to download the 2012 Healthcare Benefits Survey.

By Michael Moran Alterio

When $150K a year really just is not fair

You're a b-to-b media CEO. Your company is doing okay, actually, especially compared with a few other competitors in the industry. You've had to tighted your belt in recent years -- since the downturn, who hasn't? But the economy is a little better, lately, and one of the issues you face is compensation. Are you in danger of losing your talent to your competitors? Is it time to look at salary adjustments?

Pick a job as an example. A fairly top level job. You're paying your pro about $150,000 per year. Is that the going rate? What's typical for execs at that level these days? What you really want is data like this, based on confidential information from 18 people who have the same job title, from companies similar to yours:

So it turns out that annual compensation of $150K puts this employee in the lowest 10th percentile of people with the same title -- perhaps an evaluation would be in order. What if you could get this data, but with the actual job title listed at the top of the table? You can.

Or maybe you are the talent management director for your b-to-b company. You have to make decisions and recommendations about compensation all the time -- and you need to know how your company stacks up against standard industry benchmarks. How do salaries vary by region? By title? What about unit size? Long-term incentives? What if you could get this info for over 150 job titles, broken down into corporate, magazine, digital and event categories? You can.

ABM and MPA partner every year with Towers Watson to produce a report with the data you need on compensation for event, online and print job titles. The report is free to members. There is just one catch -- this proprietary research is not available to the public. It is also not available to all ABM members. Only companies that contribute their data to the project receive the aggregated research results.

The deadline for inclusion in the 2012 report is Aug.3. To participate, contact Towers Watson compensation analyst Kevin Kraus at 914-289-3389 or e-mail kevin.kraus@towerswatson.com. 

By Michael Moran Alterio

The print trade bottom line for 2011 and beyond

The entire b-to-b information industry – from conference keynote speakers to investment bankers to pundits, prognosticators and even publishers – seems convinced that print is dead, and the paper magazine business is just one more shambling corpse among the many we see on TV these days. The reality is something different.

Certainly, the newspaper business is in trouble. Every year, the Pew Research Center puts out a “State of the News Media” report. The most current report states: “Most newspapers are profitable on an operating basis, many with margins in the mid-teens. But net margins – after interest, taxes and special charges – are razor-thin. And most papers achieved profitability largely through cutting.” 

However, the picture for trade press magazines is a little more sunny. A wide census of trade magazine ad pages, conducted by Inquiry Management Systems for ABM’s BIN Report, concluded that trade ad sales rose 3.8 percent over the 2010 to 2011 period. A more limited sample of 26 companies who participated in ABM’s Managing Profits research reported that print revenue declined 2.3 percent over the 2010-2011 period. Those 26 companies may be underperforming the industry total, but even they are doing better than newspapers on profit margins: these 26 companies reported an aggregate profit margin of 16.7 percent for 2011.

That 16.7 percent print margin is for all 26 companies in total, some of which are not primarily print oriented. The Managing Profits research took an even closer look at 34 print brands. Considering total revenue and total expenses for these print brands, the aggregate profit margin was 23.0 percent. And considering only print-related costs and print-related revenues for these print-specialist brands, the profit margin was 35.5 percent in 2011. The takeaway is that print can be quite profitable, even today, for a subset of the industry.

That subset includes several vertical niches, including business, advertising and marketing publications, which saw ad sales rise 28.2 percent in 2011; transportation and logistics publications, up 14.5 percent; and agriculture, up 12.6 percent, per ABM’s 2011 year-end BIN Report. In support of these numbers, ABM’s Ag Council recently conducted research that found very high engagement levels among readers.

Engagement among advertisers is also high. In a recent survey of big-brand marketers from companies such as Unilever, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, 94 percent vastly disagreed when asked if print is dead. The research was cited in an article on the value of print, in Magazine World, published by FIPP, the global magazine association. (hat tip, MastheadOnline.com)

But there is no question that in total the print trade news business faces great challenges. Although the precipitous drops seen in 2008 and 2009 are behind us, it says something that modest declines are good news. Comparing 2010 to 2011, total number of publications dropped 3.2 percent; total folio pages dropped 8.0 percent, and of those folio pages, 54.2 percent of them consisted of advertising pages in 2010 vs 51.1 percent in 2011. The fact that print revenue fell only 2.3 percent while total ad pages fell 8.0 percent suggests that publishers have been able to raise ad prices, a possibly optimistic sign for an economic turnaround ahead. The vast bulk of print revenue continues to originate from display advertising. Fully 83.9 percent of print revenue derived from advertising, up three percentage points from 2010.

To put these figures in perspective, compare the data for 2011 with data from 2007, gathered by ABM with a similar research project then called the Media Cost and Revenue Report. These graphs of revenue sourcing show how incoming revenue streams have changed drastically in recent years:

 

Based on the data in hand, the short- to medium-term forecast for print magazines is not death. Print will not regain the primacy it once had, but there is every indication that it will be one of several sturdy legs on which the business media and information industry stands.

By Michael Moran Alterio

Asking for the family jewels: The value of ABM's 2012 Managing Profits Report

As a business journalist with almost two decades of experience reporting on private companies, I know full well that there are some data which company execs just will not divulge. They seldom reveal their revenue. Not a peep on their profits. Ask them for a detailed breakdown of their expenses and revenue streams, and you might as well be asking them to take off their clothes. It just doesn't happen.

So imagine my surprise and wonder when I joined ABM earlier this year and learned that the association has a history of getting member companies to reveal the most intimate details of their operations. The last time the association had the resources to run this kind of research was in 2008, for fiscal year 2007. I was brought on to bring that report up to date.

A lot has changed since 2007, not least of which is a shift from print operations to include digital and event revenue sources. But one thing that has not changed is the willingness of companies to grant access to the family jewels. Members trust their association with this data, and ABM has a track record of utmost discretion. Moreover, the value of the research more than offsets the business community's traditional reticence. Being able to get back the aggregated data for all participating companies, in the form of widely used, fundamental benchmarks, is an immensely valuable part of being an ABM member.

ABM's 2012 Managing Profits Report is now out and available to any member of the association. Make sure you are logged into the website, and then click the link on the Research Reports page to download the latest PDF.

Because the data is so useful, this report is available to all ABM members, not solely to participants. However, the validity of the data depends on getting as many members as possible to participate. For the 2012 report, about one-quarter of the membership participated. As a special thank you to the companies that made this research possible, ABM offers these participants a custom report based on the data that looks specifically at intelligence useful to their business. Here are some examples of custom reports that a participating company might request:

• A company might like a deeper look at how audience development expenses relate to profitability, with some examples of typical audience development expenditures for brands based on revenue and audience size. The company might like to see exactly where its own brands place on graphs of such results.
  
  
• A company might want a look at print expenses and revenue sources based on magazine circulation size, revenue and frequency, with a comparison to data from five years ago.
  
  
• A company might want a closer look at average revenue per user data, including typical ARPU ranges for brands using varied revenue models, and comparing that to their own brands.

Data from these custom projects may be used in future editions of the research, with complete anonymity for the companies who originally requested the data, of course. For more information on custom analysis for participating companies, please contact:

Michael Moran Alterio
Research and Content Director, ABM
212-784-6365
m.alterio@abmmail.com

By Michael Moran Alterio

Media reports say that media professionals are struggling

If you’ve read the latest unemployment figures with just a touch of schadenfreude, then indulge your guilty pleasure no more. Several new reports suggest that media professionals do not have it quite so easy, either.

A feature in the Atlantic asks “Is your job killing you?” After considering the health effects of long hours, working nights and sitting in a cubicle for hours, Brian Fung concludes that “work can be lethal” – although the evidence suggests that the unemployed still have it worse.

Meanwhile, CareerCast, a job website, has released its 2012 Jobs Rated report, and magazine and newspaper reporters evidently have the fourth-worst job in America, ranking 196 on the 200-job list. Only oil rig workers, soldiers, dairy farmers and lumberjacks have it worse, based on criteria such as work environment, stress, physical demands and hiring outlook. According to Victoria Brienza:

For the first time ever, two different media jobs made our Worst Jobs list: Newspaper Reporter and Broadcaster. As the digital world continues to take over and provide on-demand information, the need for print newspapers and daily newscasts is diminishing. To be sure, both jobs once seemed glamorous, but on-the-job stress, declining job opportunities and income levels are what landed them on our Worst Jobs list.

That's good news for event coordinators (ranked 82), receptionists (85) and ad execs (98), though, who landed in the top half of the CareerCast list. Editors made it to 119. I guess we know who they’re taking their frustrations out on. Oh wait, let me fix that before it gets to my editor: on whom they are taking out their frustrations, I mean.

And to add insult to injury, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently pronounced journalists to be outrageously overpaid. And – ouch – unprofitable. Meanwhile, Dimon, who earned $23 million last year, defended the six-figure-plus salaries at his company, which average over $300,000 per employee. Must be nice.

But at least we still have jobs, right?

By Michael Moran Alterio

Congress and courts focus on database protection

Mark Sableman is ABM's information policy counsel.

A key statute that helps businesses protect their private databases is under scrutiny by both Congress and the courts.  Database owners like ABM members are carefully watching the battle between law enforcement authorities seeking to expand the law’s coverage, and employee advocates seeking to narrow its coverage.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is an anti-hacking law passed by Congress in the wake of computer hacking scares in the 1990s.  It makes it unlawful for anyone to hack into a computer system.  It prohibits copying or use of data by anyone who accessed a computer system through “unauthorized access” or “access beyond the scope of authorization.” 

The CFAA carries civil as well as criminal provisions, and it has long been considered an effective tool for protecting business databases.  For example, if your business maintains its databases on a secure computer network, and an competitor hacks into your system, that is “unauthorized access” and it gives rise to civil CFAA claims.  Similarly, if you have given someone limited access to your computer system, and that person (say, a franchisee, a customer, or a business partner) pries into your system beyond the areas he or she was allowed to access, that too gives rise to CFAA claims.  Although the United States doesn’t have specific legal protection for databases, the CFAA affords businesses fairly good protection against database misappropriation by outsiders.

The recent controversies have arisen because of expansive interpretations of the CFAA’s “beyond the scope of authorization” coverage.  In cases where employees have harvested trade secrets and customer lists from company computers, and then used that information in their subsequent employment, the original employers have brought CFAA claims.  Their theory has been that while the employees were authorized to use the company’s computers, the use they made, gathering secrets for use against the company, was beyond the scope of authorization.  Under this interpretation, “beyond the scope of authorization” covered unauthorized purposes, not just unauthorized areas of the computer system.

Lobbyists for employees have sought to narrow the CFAA to prevent its use against employees.  But their proposed narrowing of the statute could also diminish its usefulness in protecting private databases, and ABM has joined other database companies in opposing the amendment. 

 

Meanwhile, this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in a major case, United States v. Nosal, rejected a broad interpretation of the act (including the purpose-based interpretation of “beyond the scope of authorization”) advocated by the Justice Department.  The court ruled that the CFAA’s “beyond the scope of authorization” language refers to unauthorized areas, not unauthorized purposes.  This en banc ruling by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski is likely to be influential, and, if followed, could well remove the impetus for the proposed statutory amendment, and thereby preserve the CFAA’s protections against database misappropriation by outsiders.

By Mark Sableman

Jack Griffin on the four new building blocks of b-to-b

Jack Griffin is best known as a leader in consumer media, having served as president of Meredith’s National Media Group and CEO of Time Inc. But Griffin, who will be giving a keynote at the upcoming ABM Annual Conference on The Four New Building Blocks of B-to-B, actually began his media career in 1982 as a reporter for a supermarket trade publication called The Griffin Report, and his media philosophy has always been heavily influenced by b-to-b.

“That was an incredible experience covering an industry and learning how to understand an industry sector,” Griffin told ABM in a recent video interview. “I think that b-to-b mentality of knowing the customer and the customer’s business, translates to b-to-c in very direct ways that sometimes aren’t obvious. When I got to Meredith for the second time in 2004, Meredith was very focused on the home category — we were in the midst of a tremendous housing boom but it was clear that it wouldn’t last. We reviewed our position as primarily a print provider and took a b-to-b approach to build Meredith out to a vertically-oriented, surround the customer-approach.”

At ABM’s Annual Conference on April 29, Griffin (now founder of Empirical Media Partners) will talk about the Four Building Blocks of B-to-B and how they aid the “surround the customer approach” of b-to-b. “The customer is now the center of the realm,” said Griffin. “We need to look to our customers, the ability to aggregate that customer, understand that customer through data and ultimately deliver compelling content and solutions as the core organizing principles of what this business is all about.”

The four building blocks offer a framework for how to think about your business going forward, according to Griffin. They include:

1. Audience and data round that audience.
2. Content and the brands around that content.
3. The unique convening and community power of b-to-b.
4. The intersection of social media and mobile. According to Griffin, data is the new media.

“Everything is measurable—the end-user will essentially tell you what he or she is intending to do. Many best-in-class companies are building this business model around the ability to interact with the customer, to get that data, aggregate that data, and to fuse it into their business models and the way they create content. Think about what data does on the buy side. Data gives the advertiser the ability to place message where they want it at any given time. This isn’t a new concept for marketers but it is a new approach for media companies.”

By Matt Kinsman

The Pursuit of Paid Content: Can B-to-B Publishers Afford Not To Charge Online?

According to ABM’s recent Business Information Network numbers, b-to-b industry revenue posted a significant increase in 2011, up 7.2 percent to $26.5 billion. The growth was across every product category tracked, with digital up 22 percent, data services up 6.5 percent and even print beating out trade shows in growth (3.8 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively.

But despite those encouraging numbers, “advertising” is starting to become a dirty word in the investment community. “What I find a little surprising is the more general negativity toward all advertising-supported businesses – print and digital,” wrote former ALM CEO Bill Pollak in a recent blog post. “These savvy investors believe that the upheaval in the advertising business has only just begun, and will swamp traditional carriers of branded print or banner advertising.”

Meanwhile, The Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism recently offered a gloomy forecast, claiming that media is only picking up one new digital dollar for every seven that it loses in print ad sales.

Paid content is one of the solutions to evolving beyond an advertising-driven business. Brian Morrissey at Digiday wrote, “Paul Rossi, managing director of the Americas for The Economist, told me ‘it’s suicide’ for publishers to not charge online. The reason: The online ad system simply cannot support high-quality journalism. The Economist gets $70 CPMs in print and $30-20 online. Rossi isn’t the only one who is clear-eyed about this. Martin Sorrell has said as much, and he’s the head of one of the largest ad-buying firms in the world.”

However, the Economist is one of the rare success stories to date — most paid content strategies have shown mixed results. The New York Times last month halved the number of free stories at its site (good for the outlook of paid content), while The New Republic last week announced it would drop its pay wall limiting archives and comments to print subscribers but making key articles from current issues available to anyone (maybe not so good). Press Plus+ — the start-up from Steve Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz now owned by R.R Donnelley that offers a metered approach for media companies including the New York Times — says almost all of its 285 media partners charge print subscribers a premium for digital access, with papers charging 10 percent on top of print subscriptions for digital access, seeing 90 percent response rates.

Paid content goes to the roots of most business-to-business publishers, whether through old fashioned newsletters, “rich data” or, increasingly, their own subscription/corporate licensed service. Strategies are moving away from the old “push” approach to more targeted, flexible solutions (with renewable revenue streams), such as ALM’s Smart Litigator service. “We like site licenses,” said Pollak at ABM’s Advanced Leadership Program earlier this year. “Right now it’s a license for one product, but the real game for us will be getting licenses for multiple products.”

Of course, paid content requires investment in content creation (something that’s been anathema for many cash-strapped media companies in recent years). As Digiday says of The Economist, “The Economist’s current issue has a 10-page special report on Cuba’s march to embrace capitalism. Rossi allows that’s a fundamentally uneconomic enterprise, hardly something the number crunchers at Demand or HuffPo would think worthwhile. But it’s also what gives The Economist the cachet to charge $120 for a subscription. It won’t discount that for digital media, Rossi said. ‘We don’t start out asking what’s the best ad product,’ he said. ‘We start out asking what’s the best reading product.’”

“Commodity content is going to go away,” said Jack Griffin, founder of Empirical Media Advisors and former president of Meredith’s National Media Group and former CEO of Time Inc. (and the opening keynote at ABM’s upcoming Annual Conference). “What you will be left with is quality content you can’t get anywhere else.”

And while business media companies are pursuing paid content, what’s the hot new revenue source for many business information companies? Advertising.

“In the world of specialized content creation we’re seeing the revival of some greatest hits from the past — what’s old very well might be new again,” says Lucretia Lyons president of Business Valuation Resources and a director of the Specialized Information Publishers Association (and a speaker at ABM’s upcoming annual conference, in which she will be part of a panel with Gordon Crovitz and Bloomberg global head of Web properties Paul Maya discussing “Paid Content Nirvana.”) “Pressure drives innovation and we’re more open-minded about generating revenue from previously untried sources or models. One of the ‘new’ ways of looking at advertising and sponsorships in the specialized b-to-b publishing world directly correlates to the value we deliver in our respective niches. The more words you enter into the Google search bar, the more valuable the results. So the sell side model for us isn’t about getting a message in front of a massively large audience, it’s about getting a product or service in front of, perhaps, 200 ‘hot’ leads. BVR recently hosted a web workshop on Monte Carlo Simulations and landed — for us — a significant sponsorship from a simulation software vendor. We were able to give them 10 minutes during the program to talk about the software at a very advanced level. The rarity of our content has opened fresh dialogue with sponsors and advertisers who demand a clear ROI calculation.”

By Matt Kinsman

Future Cloudy, Try Again Later

In the face of complaints that iPad magazine subscriptions can crowd up all a tablet’s storage space, one solution is to store back issues in the cloud.

Tablet computers, especially Apple’s iPad, are on the steep side of the growth curve. Sales in general are forecast to rise 54 percent in 2012. Use among businesspeople is set to quintuple over the next five years. Tablet users shopping with Apple’s “Newsstand” app are spending $70,000 a day on newspapers and magazines.

So why are tech pundits and media opinionators so cranky about the latest iPad 3? At TG Daily, a columnist says “Yes, the iPad 2 is better than the ‘New’ iPad.” At CNNTech, Mashable writer Lauren Indvik asks, “Why do magazines look so bad on the new iPad?” And Business Insider’s Dylan Love has no question as he explains “Why Magazines Look Terrible On The New iPad.”

One of the issues that bedevils publishers is the iPad 3’s new Retina display. At quadruple the resolution (2,048 by 1,536 pixels vs. 1,024 by 768 pixels), magazine issues built for older iPads can look jaggy, while hi-res magazine folios, optimized for the new screen, look great but require larger file sizes. That’s a problem given the relatively low memory capacities in most tablets. As iPads fill up with every new issue that a magazine subscriber downloads, especially issues filled with video ads and high-res graphic bells and whistles, the problem of bloat increases. The last thing a publisher wants is to be an object of resentment as a subscriber ponders what to delete.

(And to be fair, some less cranky writers are defending the new iPad, saying that the file size issue is manageable.)

Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite will be offering one solution when it becomes available later this year: it gives publishers the ability to manage how the reader stores back issues. For example, a publisher can specify that the three most recent issues of a magazine are stored locally, on the iPad, and the older issues are deleted from the iPad and available through Adobe’s cloud service. The DPS system, according to Adobe’s Lynly Schambers-Lenox, group product marketing manager, digital publishing, offers publishers flexibility in deciding how many issues to store on the tablet and how many to offload to the cloud.

If publishers adopt this solution, they’ll need to push it as a feature, not a bug. Publishers will have to sell this as a space saver, so that when an off-the-grid reader wants an article from four months ago and realizes it has been “deleted” without her permission, she does not get angry.

Does a reader still “own” a back issue of a magazine that lives on the cloud? Did they own it when it was on their iPad just after publication? Intellectual property rights aside, cloud-based storage of back issues -– when it launches -- may be the solution that quiets the critics of app-based publishing.

By Michael Moran Alterio