iOS 5

Apple’s Newsstand launched with the release of iOS 5 on October 12th, and by any measure, it appears to be a big win for Apple and for publishers alike. Since the iPad took the technology world by storm 18 months ago, it’s been an interesting time for publishers with several notable App Store rejections, industry confusion about how to implement tablet subscriptions, and a fair amount of criticism of Apple’s 30% revenue share. It appears now that Newsstand is the real deal, delivering on the iPad’s promise of a new dawn for publishers. Huzzah!

Not all major publishers came out of the gate with Newsstand titles, but a handful made a splash. Urban Airship customers The Guardian and Future Publishing were notable early adopters. The Guardian released a long-awaited update to its popular iPad reader, and Future Publishing launched nearly 60 new magazine titles on their custom-built publishing platform, including Future Music, Total Guitar, and Mac | Life. The New York Times, Conde Nast, Rodale, and others were all early to market as well, contributing to a great selection of Newsstand titles from which to choose.

The early success of the platform bodes well for traditional publishers that are under increasing pressure to produce big revenue gains in mobile distribution. Here at Urban Airship, we’re excited to see so many customers using our tools to achieve this success. We have been fortunate to work with many large publishers since the early days of Urban Airship, and have built a compelling product offering for this segment of the market. “Urban Airship is a Direct Marketers dream”, said Richard Walker, who oversees distribution and marketing at Future Publishing.  He also noted that, “The impact on our customers has been a better user experience, and the opportunity to discover new publications in Newsstand.”

Here’s a bit about each of the components we provide that make up our complete offering:

• Newsstand library support. Via our iOS library, Newsstand apps are configured to handle Auto-renewable subscriptions and single-issue purchases via Apple’s In App Purchase, integrating with the Newsstand framework easily.
• Content Delivery. Urban Airship hosts & delivers the physical magazine & newspaper content and verifies purchase receipts with Apple, making that content available to the end user on multiple iOS devices and restorable in the event that a device is reset.
• Push Notifications. Push is a key piece of the puzzle for a properly functioning Newsstand experience. Notifying subscribers of new available content, breaking news, or live in-app discussions is a key engagement driver, bringing end users back to your app again and again. Push Notifications also wake up the app and trigger background downloading when new issues are available, eliminating the need to wait around while the new issue downloads. Content is preloaded while you sleep and available for you right away.
• Audience Segmentation. Our flexible APIs allow publishers to collect preference information from end users, e.g., alert settings for Political & Entertainment stories, location information, “Quiet Time” preferences, and more. By allowing users the ability to opt in only for the most contextual alerts at the most appropriate frequency, volume, and times, publishers maintain optimal access to this communication channel. Use our Tags & Aliases features to run drip campaigns, associate mobile users with profiles in your CRM, and offer a highly personal and contextual user experience.
• Free (seed) content. It’s important to include a suitable amount of free and/or preview content for non-subscribers, or as our customers like to think of them, “future subscribers.” If a free app has no useful function without requiring a purchase, then it will most likely be deleted faster than you can say Qwikster. Urban Airship supports “free” content, such as back issues, that can be listed alongside single-issue sales and subscription options.
• Reports. Know thy users. Understand how your users are interacting with your app, which types of messages are most effective for which constituencies, peaks and valleys of app usage, and more. Our reporting tools round out the third pillar of any successful digital distribution strategy. Engage, Monetize, Analyze! (Rinse and repeat, naturally)

It’s been 18 months since the iPad was announced. Some called it a big iPhone. Publishers held out high hopes but ran into early disappointments, and even today, struggle with their digital content strategies. Today, Newsstand is paying off, and visionary companies like Future Publishing and The Guardian are taking the lead.

Contact us if you are interested in adding Newsstand and Subscriptions to your app.

Today we’re adding Rich Push™ Composer to all existing Pro and Premium accounts, as well as anyone who has signed up for our 45 day trial. Much like Push Composer, this new wizard allows you to build and preview Rich Push™ messages for your audience. Rich Push™ is a product that we’ve had available for quite some time via our API, but it’s always been missing a certain something on the front-end. That certain something was a user-friendly interface, which we proudly bring you today with this launch. We think you’ll agree.

Rich Push™ Composer is just the beginning of the interaction. After adding our Rich Push™ Inbox to your app with our embedded iOS library these messages will live on for each of your app’s audience members. The Inbox has full management control for your users, with read/un-read marks, and the ability to delete messages. Indeed if you use our Rich Push™ API, you can also manage their Inbox for them remotely. If you want to remove a time-sensitive message from their list, that capability is in your hands. App users will see beautiful rich HTML messages that overlay your app cleanly, and a familiar Inbox format. Customize the default look and feel to fit your app, or use our sample off the shelf. If your app demands a truly compelling user experience we’ve also built in a Javascript to Objective-C bridge into the iOS library. You can have dynamic Rich Push™ messages which take an action directly in your app, like taking your user directly to a In-app Purchase view.

We’re only scratching the surface of Rich Push™, and now with a full Composer you can see its power immediately. Sign up for a free trial today to get access to Rich Push™ Composer and let us know what you think!

With the launch of iOS5 we’ve been busy updating all our phones around the office and watching the adoption numbers go up. But along with the new Notification Center comes a whole new set of visual styles for Push Notifications on the iPhone, iPod, and iPad. So we’ve updated Push Composer with a few new previews to cover the new visual landscape that is Push on iOS5! We’ve also added a few new features to boot. There are three new ways that notifications can appear, and a bunch of new user controls for governing these new features.

Lock Screen Preview

The most common view will be “Lock Screen” notifications, which are similar to previous iOS versions but with a new style and sans buttons.

Pull Down Display Preview 

This pull-down view displays all your unacknowledged notifications in an aggregate view (by app) and lets you launch the app from any specific notification or clear them all. Each of these is now available in full preview mode within Push Composer.

Banner Notification Preview

Additionally there’s the new “Banner” notification that rotates into view at the top of the screen when your device is in use, even within other apps.

Push To A Deep Link

But that’s not all. We’ve also added the ability to send Key/Value pairs of data directly with any push from within Push Composer. What this means is that you can include a “deep link” to a specific place, page, or story within your app. This long-standing API feature is now available directly through the web interface in composer.

Improved Byte Count Accuracy

We also improved the byte counts for your message composition to more accurately reflect the total space remaining in your message, especially around non-English characters.

 All of these additions join the previously available preview screens (for users on iOS3 & 4, and Android) as well as other great features like Scheduled Notifications, sounds, badges, and tags. Timezone calculations have also received some updates. Anything you can do within a Push message in our API can be accomplished with Push Composer.

Get started with Push Composer now!