• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, December 10, 2013

The total number of digital magazines downloaded every week has increased almost sevenfold from 300,000 per week in the last quarter of 2011 to around 2 million per week presently, according to new figures from Adobe, whose Digital Publishing Suite powers around 80% of all digital magazine editions tracked by the Alliance for Audited Media.

Over the last year, the total number of digital publications (created with DPS) and downloaded has more than doubled to 150 million, representing an increase of 115% over November 2012, and the total unique monthly readership of publications created with DPS has tripled from October 2012 to October 2013.

Adobe's head of digital publishing, Nick Bogaty, noted that readers of digital publications are also highly engaged with this content, spending an average of 50 minutes per month using a DPS app, compared to an average of around 40 minutes per month spent with print publications by readers surveyed by GfK MRI.

Bogaty summarized: “The audience is growing very rapidly both in audience size and engagement times, which is great news for the publishing industry in terms of building new audiences for ad businesses.” Crucially, “it seems to represent an opportunity to gracefully transition their business from print to digital.”

Adobe has also been arming publishers with new tools to boost reach and engagement, including social sharing tools for Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. There is also a system for push notifications built directly into DPS that alert readers to new content and free preview capabilities that allow consumers to immerse themselves in the interactive experience provided by digital publications, then convert to paying customers through a simple interface.

On the publisher side, Adobe has also created tools to enable publishers to employ a variety of paywall models.