Well gee-golly, ain’t that something! Today, Playboy Enterprises has launched i.Playboy.com, a site that gives you access to every page from every issue of Playboy ever published. That sure is a lot of…articles. Here’s the scope of what we are …

John Loughlin, Executive VP and GM of Hearst Magazines, which publishes Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Popular Mechanics, and other popular titles, provided an inside look into Hearst’s content strategy for the digital age here at ad:tech NY. 

Do you think Hearst’s success in traditional publishing will extend to triumph in the online world? Let us know in the comments section.

Kobo announced that it is now offering newspapers and magazines for the Kobo Wireless eReader and its iPhone and iPad apps. The selection includes "dozens of top U.S. and Canadian publications". As an added bonus, the company is offering a two-week free trial period. 

According to MediaFinder, which claims to be the largest online database of U.S. and Canadian publications, 90 magazines were launched in the first half of 2010. That is way down from 187 titles launched during the same period in 2009.

Online subscription will generate 24 percent of new business sales for magazines in 2010, according to a new report from the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA).

The percentage of subscriptions generated from the Internet has increased steadily since 2006:

Owners of e-readers are avid fans of magazines when compared to U.S. adults who do not own such devices, according to a new report from Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI).

The majority (91%) of e-reader owners read magazines, while 84 percent of total U.S. adults are magazine readers. In addition, e-reader owners read an average of 13 magazine issues a month, compared to 11 issues for average adults.

Back in 2008, Google filed a patent, which was recently published for public viewing. The patent is called "Segmenting Printed Media Pages Into Articles," and appears to imply that the company wants to take individual articles from print publications and turn them into individual articles on the web. The abstract says:

Leading publishers are getting together for what is widely being considered something of a "Hulu for magazines." Publishers involved include Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc.

Google’s quest to organize all the world’s information has taken another step forward today with the announcement that magazines are now appearing in Google Book Search. In time, these results will also become part of regular Google searches.

The economy seems to have pushed Conde Nast into an "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it" state of mind.  New reports indicate that the giant publisher has postponed plans to relaunch one or more websites tied to its magazines.

Audio and Video aren’t the only forms of media being pirated on the Internet.

There is a site called Mygazines.com that thinks they can get away with allowing users to upload entire copies of magazines provided they simply acknowledge that they have purchased it.

Not surprisingly, the publishers aren’t too thrilled with this.

Some publishers have been reported to be preparing legal action, and the site’s days (at least in the current format) are likely numbered.

Magazine subscriptions are strong commitments of a sort; after forking over a few bucks, you’re locked into receiving a single publication for a year (or more) or your life.  Time Inc. aims to loosen things up by launching a Netflix-style site for magazines called Maghound.

A year over year look at first quarter spending in 2007 and 2008 showed online display advertising gaining well. The rest of the media industry…not so much.

Research shows that print ads that contain URLs  are up to three times as likely to drive readers to a website than those that don’t include them.

Not that this information comes as much of a surprise, but it is probably a tactic that many businesses still are not using.

The Research Shows…

Wal-Mart is pulling more than 1,000 magazines from its stores.

Just about every major publisher will be affected. The retailer is thought to be responsible for generating more than 20 percent of all retail magazines in the U.S.