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THE MONEY SHOT

SI’s Freemium iPhone Model Converts New Believers
Steve Smith

Magazines have been spewing mobile apps out into the iPhone mobisphere for months now as publishers fall all over themselves to embrace the new new thing in digital platforms. And yet we rarely get to see the consequences of those efforts.

Many

magazine-branded apps languish just outside the best-seller lists in the Apple App Store, and publishers are reticent to give out raw numbers. But Sports Illustrated isn’t afraid to crow about the performance of its special Swimsuit 2010 application. The app has been sitting atop the sports category in the iTunes App store for the last week, even beating out NBC’s app dedicated to Olympics coverage. According to Rob Kligman, national digital director for SI.com, the free app has been downloaded 411,648 times since the launch. That means some nice ad exposure for the charter sponsor Universal Pictures, which is promoting the films Green Zone, Repo Man and MacGruber in banner ads at the bottom of the display that click through to feature-rich microsites and trailers for the respective films.

Also key to the SI strategy, however, is paid content. Like many games and now some magazine brands like Esquire, SI is using the free sampler app as an introduction to the much deeper $1.99 version of the mobile Swimsuit edition. The good news for SI is that the free app is converting 7.8% of users to the upgrade.

Kligman says that as of Monday, Feb. 22, 32,257 iPhone and iPod Touch users have purchased the full version. This is enough activity to place the Swimsuit 2010 app as the 33rd highest-grossing mobile app currently in the apps store. The free version is the 13th most popular app overall in the store, which is no small feat in a list dominated by free gaming apps.

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