Tech Investments Make For Happy Publishers

hqAfter the doldrums of 2008 – 2011, investment in manufacturing and production technology in our industry saw a spike up in 2012, and the trend continued last year according to industry stats.

Bill Mickey reports in Folio: that “satisfaction levels with technology are on the rise as well, at least with the b-to-b media market. Consumer publishers are not as happy, in most cases either maintaining satisfaction levels with specific technology types or becoming less satisfied from last year.”

The stats are part of Folio:’s 2014 Magazine Manufacturing and Production Technology Survey, and includes B2B, consumer, mass market and association titles.

Mickey notes that print still dominates as the primary delivery platform for paid content, “with a mean of 79.8 percent of respondents identifying themselves as consumer publishers indicating this method. In the b-to-b market, a mean of 84.9 percent of respondents selected this platform.”

“From there,” Mickey continues, “paid content delivery drops off significantly. Only 12.3 percent of consumer publisher respondents say they offer paid Web content, while 17.5 percent of b-to-b publishers do the same.”

Mickey predicts that XML technology will continue to show strong growth.

“Larger publishers are already overhauling their content production systems to enable more efficient cross-platform publishing, a key strategy now that mobile and tablet publishing are a major focus in the content mix.

“Going forward, any growth in the XML publishing category will continue to be centered on the larger publisher market. In this year’s survey, 54 percent of the publishers who publish in XML are also in the $10 million and up revenue category. Conversely, 78 percent of publishers who don’t use XML are in the under $1 million revenue category,” Mickey writes.

Other hot technology investments include ad portal systems, used by about one in three consumer publications and a bit more than that in the B2B sector. Those that are investing in tech seem pretty happy with their decision.

“Publishers are clearly well entrenched in producing their central product platform,” says Mickey. “Virtual proofing, website production, content management platforms and mobile app layout production technology round out the top five categories by respondent satisfaction levels.”