Issue Date: May 08, 2012

New Mag+ CEO sees b-to-b publishing opportunity

Gregg Hano

Senior VP-corporate sales,

Bonnier Corp

Gregg Hano took over this week as CEO of Mag+, a mobile media platform for magazines. Most recently Hano was senior VP-corporate sales at Bonnier Corp.'s technology group, where he was a driving force behind Popular Science's iPad app. That app debuted two years ago and relied on Mag+ technology. Hano spoke with Digital Directions about Mag+'s plans for the b-to-b publishing market and how the introduction of the tablet has been a “game changer.”

Digital Directions: What will be your first steps at Mag+?

Gregg Hano: My first steps are going to focus on two things. One is the product, and keeping the product strong and continuing to innovate. And then (second) is sales, continuing to grow the number of users, the numbers of apps we license, moving more and more into the b-to-b space.

DD: How is Mag+ performing in the marketplace?

Hano: In 2011, we had about 125 different brands in the market. Today, through April 22, we have about 280 different brands in the market. From those numbers you can see that we've more than doubled, and we're only four months into the year. We have very aggressive goals, on the order of 800 apps for the year.

DD: Since their introduction more than a decade ago, digital editions have been plagued by poor user experience on desktop and laptop screens. What's your assessment of how the tablet has impacted digital editions?

Hano: The tablet was a complete game changer. I think that while some of our competitors do basic PDFs and some people don't care for that, with our Mag+ product we really don't have a lot of the same issues that you're describing. The brands that are using our product—brands like Outside, Maxim,...

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