Zinio and Affinity Join Forces to Improve Analysis of the Digital Magazine Marketplace

NEW YORK, Sept. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Affinity, the syndicated magazine research company, and Zinio, the world's largest and most popular global magazine newsstand, today announced a new partnership that combines the resources and expertise of the two companies to better meet the evolving needs of magazine publishers, advertisers and agencies.

The partnership is designed to accomplish multiple objectives.  Together, the team will work to  expand Affinity's syndicated VISTA Digital Service, which measures the effectiveness and interactivity of electronic magazine ads delivered via computers, iPads and other mobile devices.  These plans include increasing the number of Zinio issues that VISTA Digital Services tracks, reporting the effectiveness scores of ads appearing throughout Zinio editions across their UNITY™ platform

In addition, VISTA Digital will begin to measure the electronic offers of non-traditional magazine brands, beginning with Zinio's new Explore section that is available through the Top Grossing Zinio 2.0 app for the iPad.  Explore provides consumers with free access to high fidelity editorial highlights from Zinio distributed issues, along with their one-of-a-kind sponsored advertiser messaging section messages.  VISTA Digital measurement will enable Zinio to compare the effectiveness and reader action scores of Explore ads with syndicated accountability metrics.

According to Jeanniey Mullen, chief marketing officer at Zinio, "The new Affinity relationship is a breakthrough step in the right direction for anyone involved in digital publishing. We are thrilled to partner with Affinity to demonstrate and validate the effectiveness of the Zinio platform for advertisers and agencies on behalf of all of our publisher partners. And, as we grow our advertising opportunities, we look forward to creating history by offering industry-accepted ad effectiveness norms for the Explore section of our apps across our UNITY™ platform."

As part of the agreement, the two companies will also launch an ongoing series of co-branded research initiatives entitled "The Digital Magazine Space... from A to Z".  The series will focus on the adoption of digital magazine technologies and the utility of digital magazine content and advertising across the broad range of new and emerging platforms that Zinio issues are available on.

"We are pleased to partner with Zinio. They have been the leader in electronic magazine delivery since the beginning. We value being able to introduce the new insights we will gain from this partnership into the publishing and advertising marketplaces. We already know how different digital platforms are impacting the ways that consumers are reading magazine content and interacting with magazine-branded ads," remarked Tom Robinson, managing director of Affinity. "And now, we will have the ability to validate just how much of an impact it is making across thousands of magazines."

About Affinity LLC  
Affinity is a media research firm specializing in magazine audience measurement and accountability tracking.  Affinity's products include ProofReader (campaign pre-testing), The American Magazine Study (print and digital magazine audience measurement), the VISTA Service (in-market effectiveness of print and digital magazine ads) and MagPlan (the industry's first accountability-driven magazine optimizer).  Company Web site: www.AffinityResearch.net.

About Zinio  
Zinio is where the world reads, explores and interacts with the largest selection of magazines across today's most popular devices. News may break elsewhere, but stories live on Zinio. No other platform provides global access to more than 4,500 magazine titles covering every major genre, industry, specialty and hobby. Zinio users download millions of magazine issues a month in 33 languages and 20 currencies – from almost every major global publisher. The company is focused on creating an intuitive and effortless digital experience that transforms how we read, from passive to active, from solo to social. Zinio users can easily search stories and topics that they are passionate about, share with friends, save and curate content, shop for products, and store all of their favorite magazines in Zinio across all of their favorite devices. Founded in 2001 and privately held, Zinio is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, London, Paris, Barcelona and Taipei. For more information, please visit www.zinio.com, or follow us on Twitter at @Zinio.

CONTACT: Tom Robinson, 1-212-922-9582 x201

SOURCE Affinity LLC