Monkey, the free weekly digital men’s magazine launched in the UK in February 2007, is launching in Sweden, Denmark and Norway with a local partner. The Guardian has the details. It is only a matter of time before we see a local edition of Monkey for Australia as well as a local edition of their other successful free digital titles iGizmo and iMotor.
Monkey, iGizmo and iMotor are all good well targeted titles. To see how magazines are changing, check out their websites. From a newsagent perspective, we need to understand that the Dennis Publishing model is built around a direct publisher / consumer relationship. The traditional distribution channel does not exist. Newsagents are not needed to collect subscriptions – these titles are free. There are no returns, no sales data to be collected by a network of outlets operating at different levels of compliance. Best of all for advertisers – there is accurate data on advertisement engagement.