Star Magazine Leads MAZ Study That Shows Significantly Higher Engagement In Entertainment Content Apps

NEW YORK, Jan. 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- MAZ, whose publishing platform powers over 600 apps on the Apple App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore, unveiled a study today which shows that users are spending an average of 40% more time reading content within apps than on websites. In particular, entertainment content is driving much higher engagement and re-engagement than any other category.

An infographic summarizing the study can be found here:
http://marketing.mazdigital.com/infographics/MAZ_Entertainment_Infographic.png

One of the key findings indicates that users of entertainment content apps spend an average of 38 minutes in each issue. That was 15 minutes longer than sports, and was more than triple the amount of time spent in business content apps.

When reading entertainment content, users are much likelier to re-engage with an app, returning for multiple sessions to view a single magazine issue. In particular, apps such as Star Magazine, Country Weekly and Soap Opera Digest, all owned by American Media Inc., have up to 12 sessions per weekly issue, well above the entertainment app average (seven sessions).

American Media Inc. recently re-launched a brand new OK! Magazine app using the MAZ platform. In the first five weeks alone, app downloads have tripled, single issue sales have nearly doubled, and in-app revenue has increased by 50% compared to the previous five weeks in OK! Magazine's previous app. OK! Magazine was not included in this study.

"We now have all our weekly magazines publishing to iOS Newsstand using MAZ, and the engagement levels we are seeing are just off the charts," said Chris Tarrow, Tablet Production Manager at American Media Inc.

"There is a meaningful difference between engagement in entertainment apps versus other popular categories like business and lifestyle apps," said MAZ CEO, Paul Canetti. "How can other sorts of media businesses take a cue from the entertainment world?"

Other key findings:

• 40% more time is spent in apps vs. spent on the web.
• 3x more time is spent in entertainment apps vs. business apps.
• Star Magazine, Country Weekly, and Soap Opera Digest see an average of 12, 10, and 9 sessions per issue, respectively, compared to 7 times per issue for all entertainment apps.
• Total time spent per issue ranks as follows:
  38 min. - Entertainment
  23 min. - Sports
  14 min. - Lifestyle
  13 min. - Travel
  12 min. - Business

An infographic summarizing the study can be found here:
http://marketing.mazdigital.com/infographics/MAZ_Entertainment_Infographic.png

About MAZ
MAZ (mazdigital.com) is a mobile publishing platform that allows publishers to create and distribute rich digital content for tablets and smartphones. Founded by former Apple and Adobe employees, MAZ gives media providers easy-to-use tools to make their content come to life by adding interactive features such as video, audio, HTML5 and e-commerce, as well as powerful analytics. Apps created with MAZ also include a unique feature called Clippings, which allows users to "cut out" anything that they see on the screen to save or share via email or social media.

CONTACTS: Shouvik Paul
phone #: 1-855-MAZ-DIGITAL
email: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.mazdigital.com

SOURCE MAZ