What excites you most about the magazine media industry?

In a time where there is a war for attention, I think quality editorial content has value and is increasing in value more than ever. Quality content is good for your brain, it’s good for your general knowledge and your perception of the world. Magazine media offers you the chance to actually take some time and go deeper into whatever it is you’re interested in.

From a digitalisation perspective, the industry has come a long way. There’s a great opportunity to work even closer with publishers to really leverage their assets in a digital way.

Our industry supports special interest media in all its forms – live events, brand extensions, printed magazines, and of course digital editions. Some people might think digital and print are in competition, what do you think?

I think you need to take a multi-channel approach to it. What has exacerbated the situation right now is increasing costs, and that is the challenge rather than the perceived battle between digital and print. There are great examples of complimenting assets. People’s favourite publications are almost like a friend, so one shouldn’t underestimate the emotional side of these brands.

What do you wish everyone knew about Readly?

I think it’s the incredible depths of the content we have. When you get down to it, you can find some really interesting stuff.

And of course, it’s great value for money, with access to 7,500 titles.

Digital magazines provide the opportunity for publishers to learn more about their audiences. How does Readly harness the power of data, and how does this inform publishers?

We currently have 40 billion data points from our readers, so publishers get tremendous insight. It’s very granular and you can see when a user was looking at a certain page, for how long, and what they clicked on. Whilst the publishers use this already, there’s still a big education job from our side to bring across how you can use this to drive digital revenue, how you think about reach, and how you think about working with advertisers.

Podcasts are in their golden era now, and growth is continuing. How do you see podcasts fitting in within established magazine media?

It’s early days for Readly in this area. We’re doing it selectively and it’s about enhancing the experience, which is where our focus is.

A multi-channel approach is great, and that’s where Readly comes in. In our case, it’s all about enhancing the brand and audience experience.

It’s a smart move for publishers to get into podcasts, but you need to be conscious of why you’re doing it, how are you going to come across to users, what your value proposition is, and so on.

What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned since becoming CEO of Readly and what’s next?

I think the biggest thing is realising how much potential there is.

We’re constantly looking to elevate the user experience so that it becomes more personal and more relevant to you, in a non-invasive way. It’s about taking you to discover things that might interest you, but you didn’t know about. It’s about coming out of your own bubble.

It’s exciting also to see what’s happening with publishers, and how they are looking to spread their content in different ways beyond the traditional magazine or paper format.

We’re in over 50 markets and can find readers publishers normally wouldn’t reach. We can still do a lot more with the data. The challenge there is, you don’t necessarily always want more data, you want useful data, actionable data.