Synapse, a subscription marketing agency that works with major magazine publishers like Condé Nast, Hachette Filipacchi and Hearst, is working with with Alvenda, a company that specializes in Facebook shopping applications, to enable publishers to sell subscriptions directly on Facebook Pages and even in users' newsfeeds beginning in July or August.
AdAge reports that the tools will allow users to share articles with friends that can then be expanded into dynamic pop-ups on their newsfeeds, complete with ads and directions to subscribe to the magazine elsewhere on Facebook.
"Consumers don't want to leave where they are on the web, wherever they are," Alix Hart, VP for online marketing at Synapse, told AdAge. "Facebook is a place where we think that over the coming year there are going to be more and more opportunities to present magazine offers in a really relevant way to consumers, as they're starting to share magazine content in a much deeper way than ever before."
Notably, Facebook will not be taking a cut of the revenue generated by subscriptions via the app. What's unclear, however, is how much information Facebook will reveal to the publishers -- an issue companies like Condé Nast have had with Apple, who will not reveal the names and addresses of those who purchase iPhone and iPad apps of magazines. It's also currently unknown how Facebook will be incorporated into the digital newsstand publishers announced last December.
Either way, this is a smart marketing move for magazines, and one I suspect will have much more success monetizing digital magazine content than simply developing versions for the iPad. I'm also interested to see how publishers of other types of media, like traditional books and news, will emulate this model.