The best-looking digital edition of 2009 is here

Online, January 13, 2010 (Newswire.com) - BOSTON, Mass. - 13 January 2010 - The possibilities with digital editions are rapidly expanding. Zmags, known as a major provider of self-serviced software for digital editions, set up a contest to find the best-looking digital edition created by one of the 2,500 customers in 50 countries. The amazing Winding Road Magazine got the most votes in a close contest supported by a poll on Facebook. The digital magazine covers the world of cars from the driver's point of view and is designed and optimized for the online reading experience. The landscape orientation and fonts were tested, and every detail was considered to maximize the screen real estate to provide users rich imagery.

"We're extremely proud of the editorial, art and technology teams that have worked together with the Zmags platform to make an outstanding magazine with a great user experience that provides incredible ad performance," said Rob Grady, Managing Partner of Nextscreen Labs.

The magazine was created by Austin-based publisher Nextscreen LLC, who cleverly optimized their content for the digital platform and leveraged the Zmags API to create a magazine shell that provides IAB-compliant ad serving. Not only did the creative team at Nextscreen create a great-looking magazine, they found a way to grow a solid revenue source by integrating standard and non-standard digital advertising rotation within the magazine platform.

"By offering advertisers a non-standard, large format advertising unit, Winding Road magazine has been able to consistently deliver advertiser click-through rates of 3% to 6%, far exceeding typical digital ad performance," said Susan Moore, Vice-President of Marketing, Nextscreen LLC.

Overall, the market for flash-based digital editions has been on a rise in 2009. Zmags reports that 134,000 digital editions were created, delivered and managed with their ICM solution last year. The most popular uses are digital equivalents to companies' magazines, brochures and catalogs. Used as a supplement, the digital editions are a cost-effective channel for marketers and publishers to expand their reach and engage more readers.

For more information on Zmags' ICM solution and a free trial, visit http://www.zmags.com/trial/.