Digital Printing: Emerging Opportunity for Magazine Publishers, Catalogers, Printers

With most of the publishing industry concentrated on how to monetize online content, it’s easy to forget that print magazines still play a crucial role in publishers’ product portfolio and revenue pie. And believe it or not, new ways of wringing more value and revenue out of print vehicles continue to emerge.

Advances in digital printing are creating new opportunities for publishers to create more customization in their print offerings, taking advantage of the rich audience data for the kind of targeting that advertisers are increasingly keen on.

On November 16, Printing Impressions and sister brands Publishing Executive and Book Business, will host a 3-hour reception for magazine and catalog publishers and printers in New York City the afternoon before the Digital Book Printing Conference to specifically dig into this topic.

Digital Print: The Emerging Opportunity for Magazine & Catalogs will explore how innovations in digital printing technologies are creating new business opportunities for magazine publishers to grow revenue from their print products – and perhaps even launch new ones. The event will feature an overview of digital printing market trends and case studies on digitally printed magazines from equipment manufactures, printers, and publishers. Digital Print is a free, limited attendance event for magazine publishers, catalogers, and printers. If you’re interested in attending, please contact Matt Steinmetz, publisher and brand director of Publishing Executive, at msteinmetz@napco.com.

For quite some time, publishers have touted their ability to target valuable audience segments, but recently we’ve seen new use cases for print customization that reflect the preferences of digitally minded marketers. For example, in June Publishing Executive contributor D. Eadward Tree reported on the potential around “mass customization” of printed mags:

“Get ready for the rise of mass-customized “B2Me” magazines. Once a pipe dream, the concept of magazines that are tailored to each reader is now a reality.

“Consider, for example, ZEB magazine of Belgium, which has a print run of 150,000 copies that are so customized and personalized that no two copies are alike. Or American Printer magazine, a “B2Me” magazine claiming to replace “old-style advertisements with data-driven, individualized Messaging Positions.”

As D. Eadward Tree suggests, greater and more affordable customization of print possible are “new full-color inkjet presses that can print different versions of the same pages without the expensive press stops and plate changes required by traditional offset printing.” Advances in inkjet quality have also spurred digital printing adoption, which is a reason we’ve seen greater adoption in the book publishing industry.

Digital printing and customization have also opened up the possibility of “programmatic print.” Not without its challenges, programmatic print is an exciting potential for a sector of the industry that has been in need of new revenue inspiration.

Digital Print: The Emerging Opportunity for Magazine & Catalogs
November 16, 2016, 3:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Ben & Jack's Steakhouse
255 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10016