This year, Media TransAsia, publisher of a number of international magazine titles, ceased production of print editions of its 14-year-old Seventeen Thailand magazine after sales fell by half.

Rasina Uberoi Bajaj, editor-in-chief of Media TransAsia, told The Nation that to keep the magazine alive, her company had shifted its content onto a website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SnapChat and Twitter.

“Content marketing is now a key strategy to create new revenue streams from online advertising and retain readership,” she said.

The main target readers of the magazine are aged 18-24, so moving from a traditional platform to new media platforms was unavoidable. To cash in on the rapid changes in the digital sphere, Media TransAsia established a team to monitor online conversations daily to make sure the company could create the right content at the right time.

“Under our content-marketing strategy, we need to create various types of content to cover the different needs of readers as well as the requirements of advertisers and brands. [This includes] native content, advertorials, Q&A live, video clips, games, e-newsletters, reward programmes and lucky draws,” she said.

The publishing house also focuses on SEO (search engine optimisation) for all content on its website. This resulted in an increase of page views to 344,524 in October from 105,137 in May.

Urasa Chittamvinich, editor-in-chief of Lifestyle + Travel, a bi-monthly English-language magazine, said the key to keeping the magazine successful was using its unique strengths to differentiate itself from competitors.

She compared physical magazines to fine dining while online magazines were like fast food.

“However, the use of social media is also important to share or generate breaking news related to the stories in physical format to help increase engagement with target readers in online platforms,” she stressed.

Her publication had acknowledged the increasing role of online media for the past four or five years, so it decided to create a pdf format of its magazine and post it on its official website to make it easy for online readers to access.

“As a travel magazine, we cannot wait for readers to buy our magazine at bookshelves any more, so we have to be more aggressive by having a concession with Airports of Thailand to put our publication at the departure gates at Suvarnabhumi Airport,” Urasa said.

As well, the magazine is placed in Thai Airways’ airport lounge for inbound passengers.

Apart from Thailand, Lifestyle + Travel magazine is also available in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Myanmar.

Media diversify

On top of online a media strategy, major newspaper publishers are struggling to diversify into television. The media industry still believes that this segment remains a strong platform to reach mass audiences.

Aitsanart Wuthithankul, new business development manager at Kantar Worldpanel Thailand, said TV continued to dominate the Thai media market with more than a 60-per-cent share, while advertising spending via newspapers and magazines was declining.

Nation Multimedia Group has two digital TV channels – Nation TV and Now 26 – while Post Publishing has the Mushroom Television production house. Matichon Group said it was putting more effort into digital media while being more aggressive in producing and supplying news programmes and documentary shows to the Voice TV and Channel 7 digital stations.

Siam Inter Multimedia and Siam Sport Syndicate are also producing and supplying sport programmes to several TV stations.

However, News Network Corporation, the owner of Springnews TV station and a radio station, is taking a different approach. The company recently acquired major shares in Than Setthakij semi-weekly newspaper and launched another free weekly publication called BLT.