Readly serves over a million digital issues in the first half of 2015

Between January and June 2015, Readly subscribers opened 1,025,766 digital issues of UK magazines, all of which are ABC-allowable, paid-sale figures.

Ranj Begley, Ready UK’s Managing Director says “We are thrilled to have broken through the 1m issue barrier for a single, six month, ABC period. It shows that our rate of growth is accelerating sharply. In a market where many digital editions are still being given away free, to have generated so many paid-for sales must give the industry much more confidence about the future of the digital edition as a robust platform. It also provides more stability when the changes at Apple Newsstand are altering the digital landscape very rapidly and are raising questions about the future direction of the digital edition.”

The Top Twenty Readly titles in the Jan-Jun period in terms of average issue downloads are…

Begley: “Our Top Twenty list changes from month to month, but the current ranking shows that specialist magazines are vying for attention with the mainstream brands in a dynamic and open digital environment. Subscribers are experimenting – trying new titles as well as old favourites – and our advanced data analytics package allow us to discuss with publishers where their titles fit into our subscribers’ reading patterns. It also allows us to drill into the page-by-page detail to see which covers are working, which articles are the most popular and which advertisements are attracting attention.”

Other key facts about Readly….

• 82 per cent of the issue downloads are of current issues, with 18 per cent being of back issues. The Readly platform is a powerful way for publishers to leverage additional revenue from their back inventory – a key application of digital editions.
• Subscribers are spending an average of over 5 hours reading time per month. The Readly platform is already finding a significant place in busy consumers’ lives.
• Subscribers are using more than one device to access the content – the average device per user is 3.6. This underlines two key facts. Firstly, that the Readly service is being used flexibly in different situations, whether at home or on the move. Secondly, that more than one person in the household is using the service.
• Readly is platform agnostic. While most users have iOS, Android and other platforms are growing their share. This is helping to broaden the user base for publishers and adds more stability during the current Apple turbulence. 

Begley: “Readly is a new service for the modern reader which is already carving out time – over 5 hours a month on average – in the consumer’s busy life. With the additional functionality we have added in recent months (such as a more powerful article-topic search facility, enhanced sharing capability) the user experience is constantly being improved and developed. Add in the fact that we have some major global partnerships in the pipeline for the second half of this year and our rate of change and growth is just accelerating. This is an exciting time: both for Readly in particular and for the digital edition in general. We have much more in store for the rest of 2015!”

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