The app is expected to cost £9.99 per month or £2.99 per week, and will include content from the Mail on Sunday, magazines You and Event, as well as editorial video content and up to six bespoke video ads per edition. The iPad additional Mail on Sunday content will turn Mail Plus from a six-day operation into a seven-day offering.
It follows the initial launch of the Daily Mail's app before Christmas 2012. Internally, the tablet editon is recognised as the more natural digital extension to the stalwart newspapers, compared to the more boisterous and tabloid-styled Mail Online website.
The latest investment into paid digital content follows comments made by DMGT chairman, Lord Rothermere, at a Newsworks event in April, that "the growth of tablet and mobiles represents a sea-change for our business".
For the last five years, DMGT’s digital publishing operation has become synonymous with the free, mass reach model of its Mail Online business. Now lauded as the biggest newspaper site in the world, according to comScore data, DMGT remains committed to expanding the site’s reach as it attempts to compete with the major global news portals, like Yahoo! News.
The website is on track to report full-year revenues of £45 million in September and is expected to reach £100 million in the next three to five years.
When asked where the power of the publishing group will lie in the next five years, Rothermere told ±±¾©Èü³µpk10: "Mail Online. I feel very optimistic about that. If we make the right calls and invest more in content and grow our traffic, it can be a bigger business than the Daily Mail – financially, in terms of reach, and everything else."
At the start of July, Rothermere strengthened his financial grip of DMGT by buying out a 29.3% voting stake belonging to family members for £50 million. Rothermere, who already held 59.9% of the voting shares, now holds 89.2%.
.jpg)
.jpg)