11.01.12 - Journalists in the Swiss group ESH Management can now publish on iPad thanks to Protecmedia’s technology.  The group owns four daily newspapers - Le Nouvelliste, La Côte, L’Express and L’Impartial – each with its respective editions and supplements, and from now on they can be enjoyed by their readers on Apple’s pace-setting device. In addition, they are also available in e-paper format on the respective webpages.

Through the MILENIUM editorial platform, the Swiss group’s newspapers can be viewed on iPad with all of the functionalities that this media allows, such as browsing in e-paper format, audiovisual elements (photo galleries, videos…), reading of news in text mode or multitouch zoom. And all through an attractive and easy-to-use viewer.

“The great advantage that we have with the implementation of MILENIUM is that the generation of publications for both iPad and the e-paper is a very easy and quick process,” notes Frederic Gris, head of the group’s digital projects, for whom the generation of these versions has proved to be a very straightforward matter. “The enrichment of content, which is carried out by the same journalist who wrote the article or the story, without the need for any additional staff, is done through galleries of images and videos in a process that only takes a few minutes, and which only has to be done once, without having to consider whether it is to be published on one or more channels. In short, there is no need to duplicate tasks.”

Frederic Gris also highlights the importance of the single work interface offered by MILENIUM for all professionals: “The most important thing is that we can work with the same tool for all channels and this, without any doubt, allows us to save a great deal of time. An example of the benefits of newsroom convergence offered by MILENIUM is that at no later than half past one in the morning the different iPad versions of the newspapers, both editions and supplements, are ready. This is because enrichment has already taken place and no post-production is required, which also means that no extra staff are needed. Before, this was impossible.”

In addition, the ESH Management group can manage supplements and advertising banners that appear in the digital versions in a simple and integrated manner within the same workflow. In this regard, Frederic Gris highlights the positive reception by advertisers of these new versions: “Since we launched these versions a couple of weeks ago, there has been a 50% increase in the number of advertisers. The response has been very positive, above all with respect to iPad, with advertisers highly impressed by the possibility of including videos in advertisements.”

With a similar level of integration, it will also be capable of accessing publication statistics, based on data offered by Google Analytics, thus obtaining vital information about different aspects of the performance of the various publications. Based on these statistics, the Swiss group already has some initial data which point to how subscribers are responding to these versions. “More than 35% of the subscribers to our print edition have already activated the digital channel, which is a major achievement for us. We have now reached more than 2000 downloads of the app, beating our pre-launch forecasts, since we expected between 500 and 1000. These figures, in such a short period of time, are a magnificent result for us,” notes Frederic Gris.