Bonnier Joins Aller and Egmont in Nordic Digital Magazine Initiative

Bonnier is joining two of the Nordic region's biggest magazine publishers in starting a new initiative to strengthen the market for digital magazines. A common store is one of the things that will be investigated in the Nordic Digital Magazine Initiative. Along with Bonnier, the founders are Aller and Egmont.

"Our readers love their magazines," says Erik Aller, director general for Aller. "We want to ensure that our readers have an equally amazing experience reading on a tablet computer. We are faced with a period of technical fragmentation and we will be working for open standards and simple distribution over all relevant platforms."

The Nordic Digital Magazine Initiative has four major goals:

• To create a reader experience that can recreate and strengthen the brand's characteristics - look and feel - on the digital platforms.
• To set a standard for magazine publishing that can handle different platforms and e-readers and thereby improve the situation for the reader
• To initiate a broad discussion with the advertising industry about standards, methods of evaluation and innovative advertising solutions.
• To investigate the possibilities of founding a common store solution for digital magazines.

"Together we publish hundreds of titles that reach millions of readers every month," says Ulrika Saxon, CEO for Bonnier Magazine Group. "It's important that we have a dialog with all partners along the value chain, from hardware suppliers and stores to advertisers and readers. All so that we can continue to give readers an experience that we know they will appreciate and are prepared to pay for."

"The e-reader market is expected to grow quickly and create possibilities for fantastic reader experiences," says Kjeld Lucas, CEO for Egmont Magazines. "But we also know that it is important to start a conversation with our advertisers about the format and how ads should look in digital magazines. Through NDMI we can ensure we are working for an open market for readers and advertisers."