We reported earlier that Newsstand appears to be treating digital publishers well, and new information from Condé Nast backs that up. The publisher, which puts out many top-tier magazines including Wired, GQ and The New Yorker, has seen digital subscriptions rise 268 percent since Newsstand arrived with the iOS 5 update almost two weeks ago.
Not only did subscriptions increase, but single issue sales also skyrocketed with a 142 percent increase when compared with the eight weeks prior to Newsstand’s launch. Both represent increases as measured across all nine of Condé Nast’s digital titles available on the iOS platform.
Condé Nast’s Executive Vice President of Consumer Marketing Monica Ray conveyed the publisher’s pleasure in a press release detailing the news, saying that while some of the gains admittedly might be attributable to “the attention the launch received,” the company is “very optimistic that [it] will see a consistently higher level of growth going forward than [it] did prior to [Newsstand’s] introduction.”
No doubt the fanfare surrounding the iOS 5 update has helped put the Newsstand feature in the spotlight, but the added discoverability it brings to the table for digital periodicals isn’t going away, and I agree with Ray that those benefits will continue to be felt for all publishers.
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