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The growing body of overall information on tablet readership is reinforcing some early impressions that are promising for magazines on tablets, according to Conde Nast. Readers typically swipe through tablet editions from front to back, for example, the same way they work their way through print editions. They browse -- taking in ads as they go -- instead of jumping directly to specific articles the way web surfers do. "Consumer behavior with digital editions of magazines is very much like their behavior with print editions of magazines, and very much unlike their behavior with websites," Mr. McDonald said. Digital-edition readers are also still younger but more affluent than magazines' print readers, Conde Nast said, although the disparity has narrowed as tablet ownership has grown and Amazon and Barnes & Noble have introduced devices that are cheaper than the iPad. And ads with some level of interactivity -- a hotlink at a minimum -- continue to usually hold readers' attention longer than static ads.

Some publishers have touted digital readership as a way forward for the magazine industry as advertisers warm up to iPad editions. The 58 magazine iPad editions tracked by the Publishers Information Bureau posted a 24.5% gain in ad units through June. Still, tablet circulation has not increased as rapidly as publishers had hoped.

Magazines apps are still too big for iPads because of all the images. Each iPad magazine takes up way too much storage, and people get turned off by the iPad magazines because of that. This is a problem specific to magazines because of all the imagery, especially for ads. Books don't have this problem, since they don't need ads. The situation reminds me of early tiny MP3 players before the iPod came out with its hard drive that could store your whole MP3 collection. Magazines on iPads will start to happen once you can store a hundred or thousand issues on them at once.

The Digital Publishing Platform being developed by Adobe allows publishers and advertisers to create immersive onscreen experiences that combine the visual impact of print design, the immediacy of touch interaction, and the engagement of interactive elements such as video, audio, animated infographics, 360° views, and more. Because this platform builds on the foundation of Creative Suite 5, it lets magazine design, editorial, and production teams use familiar tools and skills to efficiently create versions for print and a wide range of screens. Integrated analytics will enable publishers to plan editorial content and provide advertisers with accurate, detailed insight into how readers are interacting with stories and ads.

"Apple is expected to announce soon a new subscription plan for newspapers, which hope tablets like the iPad will eventually provide a new source of profits as media companies struggle with declining print circulation and advertising revenue."

"Publishers wanted to pay Apple a fee rather than a cut of subscription and advertising revenue, and are not happy with Apple's terms, he said. They had hoped to offer app editions as part of subscription bundles that include print versions of the paper. Instead, they must use Apple as an intermediary with subscribers,"

With the new terms, developers will be able to create apps in Flash after Apple publicly restricted the creative tool widely used by the design community.

Apple has plateaued in U.S. smartphone market share in recent months at more than 20% -- it's slowly bleeding percentage points, according to comScore. So getting more apps in the store might be a play to increase iAd inventory when its user base is stagnant. Apple still leads in the app market -- with more than 250,000 apps in the App Store, versus Android's 80,000.

Different genres of magazines are having decidedly different starts.

science and tech titles, for example, would probably have more fans among the first iPad owners than, say, a home decor magazine.

"The majority of advertisers who jumped on board in the beginning recognized this wasn't about scale," said Robin Steinberg, senior VP-director of publisher investment and activation at MediaVest USA. "2010 and possibly 2011 are mostly viewed as exploratory years. We are in a laboratory learning as we go. Short term, we are entering these types of initiatives to gain understanding and get exposed on a test-and-learn basis. The question is: Was it at the right price? And moving forward, should it be the same price? Doubtful."

"Apple wants to be an advertising company, too. Now we have a company that wants to be GE, NBC and Omnicom -- that's mind-boggling."

"If you were a newspaper publisher, you knew where your customer lived," he said. "Steve Jobs is taking that relationship away like [he] did with the music industry. Steve wants a bigger piece of that action: intimacy with the consumer."

Devices are incredibly exciting, he said, but they're also just shiny objects that distract marketers from the real issue: content.

these are all logical, value-added extensions of the brand. They complement and complete the brand story. They halo a broader set of benefits to a more demanding and discriminating consumer audience.

In the app, we can find both clarity of brand essence and a long-overdue brand migration to service and problem-solving mode.

it is not the technique by which they communicate their brand, but the communication itself that connects the brand to the psyche of a consumer. As long as there is a need for an idea, there is a demand for what we do. In other words, we will always be in business as long as we create new ways to communicate brand stories.

Just because you have a venue for a conversation, such as social media, doesn't mean the consumer will have a conversation. We are the conversation makers. We are the ones that think of what to talk about.

Ideas become big when they are in the right place at the right time.