How geolocation is being used to promote magazine apps

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Exact Editions, which packages magazine apps for publishers, has launched an innovative new geolocation feature for some of its apps.

Selected paid-for magazine and periodical iOS apps – including back issues – will be free when downloaded at key locations.

The initiative is designed to promote the titles and encourage new readers to sign up and pay for a subscription.

For example:

• Dazed and Confused magazine is now free when downloaded at the Victoria and Albert Museum;
• Music Week from Abbey Road;
• The Gooner magazine from the Emirates Stadium;
• When Saturday Comes is available at Stamford Bridge;
• Le Monde Diplomatique from St Pancras station and the Gare du Nord, either end of the Eurostar line;
• Catholic periodicals The Tablet and the Catholic Herald will be available free from St Peter’s Square in the Vatican and Westminster Cathedral in London;
• The Literary Review will be freely available from the British Library;
• Opera magazine is free at the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center in New York.

The free downloads are enabled by using geolocation technology ByPlace, which registers coordinates when an Apple device with location services enabled is in a particular place.

This allows publishers with apps available via Apple's Newsstand to specify locations and time periods to make apps freely available. A press release explains the magazine apps will be free at set locations for a three-week period while Exact Editions and publishing partners run "promotional trials".

"This positional awareness has tremendous potential for all topical, content-rich apps in mobile markets," Adam Hodgkin from London-based Exact Editions writes in a blog post .

"It is a great subscription opportunity for publishers," Daryl Rayner, managing director of Exact Editions told Journalism.co.uk.

Publishers can use the feature to promote a magazine at a particular event or location, such as a football fan title at a stadium.

"The user gets the free content and that issue has synced to their device," she said. "When the next edition becomes available they will be notified and asked to subscribe."

There is a map of the locations where particular apps can be downloaded from at this link .