Magazines at a Digital Crossroads: eCommerce and New Models for the Future

With print revenues declining, periodical publishers have turned to digital products to restore revenues and develop new channels. None of these products are proving to be a panacea, however, as the landscape for digital products and underlying business models remain in a state of constant flux. Publishers must work quickly and intentionally to develop new products, try new models, and quickly measure the results and refine their offerings. To support these efforts, they need business systems that will enable them to efficiently deploy new offerings at reasonable cost, measure the success of these offerings, and then just as quickly and efficiently revise and re-launch the offerings to meet the evolving demands of consumers and the larger marketplace. This paper briefly highlights some of the emerging models that show promise. It makes the case for the growing need for contemporary eCommerce platforms to support publishers as they experiment, win, iterate, and drive their businesses into the future.