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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
Mag Brands Converge in iPhone Gift Guide  shoppers want is someone to aggregate them for easier consultations when in the mall. “It seemed like an obvious idea,” says Scott Dunlap, CEO, NearbyNow, a mobile shopping applications developer that just launched a Holiday Gift Guide that does just that. Seventeen, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, All You, Real Simple, Sunset, Details, Southern Living and Cooking Light will have their editors’ picks for gifts in the app, which is now available in the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store. Using the same shopping engine it has white-labeled for Seventeen, Lucky, Runners World and other magazine brands, NearbyNow created this unique cross-title catalog of picks that also includes a gift-giver tool that searches across the magazine brand suggestions. NearbyNow works with hundreds of retailers like Macy’s and Nordstrom’s to monitor current inventory at stores nationwide so users of the Web site or mobile apps can find what they want and even reserve the item at a local store. For instance, the Southern Living section of editors’ picks on the app calls out a dozen holiday items from the South that the user can order online. Marie Claire features various selections for “Him,” “Her” or “Vampire Lovers” that can be found through online links or at nearby stores. Users can search for gifts across the magazine brands by price, recipient tastes, and gender. Dunlap and his team followed shoppers for weeks and asked what they wanted from a mobile app. "It was a constant theme - they wanted every gift guide in one app so they could search them all at once," he says. Dunlap says that last year the magazines and the retailers looked at the iPhone shopping apps as a “curiosity.” “Now they all know they want to do something and are eager to try,” he says. A lot of publishers and  retailers are coming back because of the raw numbers. “We have a number of clients like Seventeen and Lucky and Brides, and when you look at the conversions from their apps it is in the millions, hundreds of thousands in a month.” Dunlap says that mobile is demonstrating just how powerful the magazines can be in driving sales. “The users are motivated to buy from the magazine. It is amazing how powerful they are.”In addition to the magazine brands, NearbyNow’s app also has catalogs from Macy’s Bon-Ton, Nordstrom and Buckle. Some of the magazine brand gift guides will not come into the app until later this week, perhaps when their holiday issues actually hit stands. The application is also being promoted in the new issues of Cosmopolitan and Real Simple. Look for our “Eye on Digital” column in next week’s issue of min for more details from Dunlap on the conversion rates some of these magazine-branded apps are seeing and how mobile ads are helping to improve the effectiveness of shopping guide conversions. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com COMMENTS
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