La Presse spent $40 million to develop its iPad app.
Friday marks the one-year anniversary of La Presse’s $40-million gamble that its future lies in an iPad app.
La Presse marks the occasion with a press release (reproduced below) in which it lauds the fact that it’s now installed in more than 450,000 tablets, making it the most popular Newsstand app in Canada. It also reminds people that it’s about to launch its first Android app, which will be available on some Samsung Galaxy and Nexus tablets starting next week.
The company does a lot of self-congratulating, throwing out some statistics to suggest how successful it has been with this giant gamble. It points out how much time people spend with the app (44 minutes on weekdays, 50 minutes on Sundays and 73 minutes on Saturdays) as well as favourable demographics (58% are in the 25-54 demo, compared to 50% for a paper like the Globe and Mail), and even a stat suggesting people like the adds on the app.
The most interesting statistic is that “nearly 30% of La Presse’s overall ad revenue” comes from the iPad app. Even if we assume that print ad revenue is falling sharply, that’s still an impressive stat.
Because La Presse+ is free, its business model is entirely based on advertising. As I explained six months ago in my analysis, La Presse has priced its iPad ads along the lines of print ads, figuring that it can create an environment where the ads are noticed like print ads are, instead of ignored like most online ads.
We don’t have access to much financial information from La Presse, because the company is privately held by Gesca, which is in turn owned by Square Victoria Communications Group, which is in turn owned by Power Corporation. But even if some bad-news figures are being held close to the vest, that 30% ad revenue figure is pretty impressive.
We can also compare the 450,000 figure to La Presse’s goals. The company had hoped to reach 200,000 readers by September, but got that in May. It hoped to get 400,000 by December, and announced in January that it had surpassed that mark in installations.
When I met with La Presse last year, the estimate was an average of 1.5 readers per tablet, since many families share them. That estimate was later confirmed by a CROP survey. But when you consider the number of people actually reading at least one issue a week (versus those who download the app and rarely use it), the ratio is closer to 1:1. Late last summer, it gave a figure of 250,000 tablets installed and 196,000 people consulting at least one issue a week. At the end of November, it was 340,000 tablets and 250,000 weekly readers. That gap will probably increase as time goes on.
At 250,000 people a week reading at least one edition of La Presse+, the tablet has a bit less than a third of the reach of the print newspaper, or about half that of the printed Gazette.
From her on out, the road gets more difficult. There will be a surge once the Android app version comes out, but then with all the geeks and early adopters already on board, and a big chunk of the general population, it will be up to convincing the hundreds of thousands still sticking with print to shift over to the iPad. And then, eventually, the big decision of what happens to the print paper.
I was handed a free copy of La Presse — on a Saturday morning — at a metro station last week. So clearly they’re not planning on shutting it down any time soon.
La Presse+ is still not perfect. It’s improved its live-news system, even while the iPad edition itself remains a once-a-day thing. It’s also added crosswords and other missing pieces since it launched.
For online readers without tablets, it remains a bit annoying. Its pages can be shared online, but videos aren’t, and dossiers with multiple articles aren’t linked to each other, making it pointless to share many major stories from the app.
Unfortunately much of this is apparently by design. The environment of the iPad app is the reason they can charge so much to advertisers. Put those same stories on a website, and you’re back to the ignorable banner ads that get pennies on the dollar. If this is the future of newspapers, it’s going to be kind of an awkward one for people who read news on anything but a tablet.
So far I haven’t heard of any major media organizations making big changes as a result of La Presse+. But if it continues gaining readers and ad revenue, that may change in the near future.
La Presse’s press release:
AN OUTSTANDING FIRST YEAR FOR LA PRESSE+, THE FREE DIGITAL EDITION FOR iPAD
Montréal, April 17, 2014 – One year ago, on April 18, 2013, La Presse launched La Presse+, a free digital application for iPad that combines the best features of print, the Web, mobile apps and video.
“Today, on the app’s first anniversary, we are proud to announce that more than 450,000 people1 have installed La Presse+ on their iPad, making it the most-downloaded free application in the “Newsstand” and “News” categories in the App Store in Canada”, said Guy Crevier, President and Publisher, La Presse. He added: “And this number is about to surge, as our readers will have a broader choice of tablets on which to read La Presse+ free of charge, with the Android version of the app due to launch on April 23.”
Loyal, engaged readers
La Presse+ stands out for the exceptional degree of loyalty and engagement it generates among readers. On average,3 they spend 44 minutes with the app on weekdays, 73 minutes on Saturdays, and 50 minutes on Sundays.
Quality profile
La Presse+ stands out for its ability to reach adults aged 25 to 54 with more than 58% of its readership4 in that demographic, —a fact that has attracted the attention of observers concerned. La Presse+ thus reaches an active customer base with a quality profile for advertisers—readers who are firmly engaged in terms of the time they spend consulting the app.
Successful business model
Those particularities have been welcomed by advertisers, who have discovered an entirely new way of interacting with their target audiences. Indeed, 68% of readers say they appreciate the ads in La Presse+ and consider them an integral part of their news and information experience. After just one year of operation, ad revenues from La Presse+ already account for nearly 30% of La Presse’s overall ad revenue.
Local and international recognition
Over the past year, La Presse+ has received several major distinctions that speak to its leadership position in the digital media industry and to its value as a high-quality news and information platform. The app has also garnered extensive media coverage both at home and abroad.
“These remarkable successes are a good illustration of the enthusiasm of readers, advertisers and industry players for this innovative digital edition. They also show how La Presse+ has rapidly stood out as a medium of the future, one that is accessible and adapted to the current needs of news consumers,” Mr. Crevier concluded.
About La Presse
La Presse, North America’s French-language news medium of record, is distributed on several platforms, including a digital edition for tablets, mobile applications, the Web and paper. Its content features distinctive, rich and diversified coverage of news and current events. The recipient of numerous awards for the quality of its content and its design, La Presse is also known for its in-depth series and special reports, as well as for the large amount of space it devotes to discussion and debate.
La Presse+, its free digital edition for iPad, fully leverages that tablet’s multi-function capabilities to deliver the most comprehensive news and information experience ever from Québec’s largest newsroom.
SOURCES:
- Localytics, April 2014.
- Estimate based on the number of monthly opens (March 17–April 13, 2014).
- Localytics (March 17–April 13, 2014).
See also: A story on La Presse+ from NetNewsCheck, with more details.
Howdy!
Makes perfect sense that “nearly 30% of La Presse’s overall ad revenue” comes from the app if “the tablet has a bit less than a third of the reach of the print newspaper.”
Right, but it means they’re getting the same ad revenue per reader on the tablet as in print. That’s huge.
I think you may have to look at the structure of their advertising to see how they are getting here. As an example, are they charging a fee to appear in both, and they parsing out the revenue by readership?
I would say overall, you need to give them a decent thumbs up here for an effort to find a solution to the problem of print media. Just like the horse and buggy of the 19th century, printed newspapers are quickly becoming a quaint concept that your parents remember from when they were growing up. The demographics for print show it for what it is, something skewing more and more to an audience that is literally dying off.
Finding a place for the local / regional non-video daily news is not a simple task, there are no easy answers. Newspapers are for the most part losing their ass big time, barely hanging on through cut backs and layoffs that are all but crippling to most. Getting somewhere near decent revenue on digital delivery is quite a feat, and perhaps may show others where the future lies.
My guess is that 20 years from now we will look back at printed newspapers like rotary dial telephones – no longer relevant and rarely used. So kudos to anyone finding a way out of the death spiral.
Any plans for a Windows RT app for this? It’s the last major platform for tablets that remains unsupported, or is that market not big enough to bother?
No. And considering Microsoft’s 2% market share in tablets, I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting one.