March: Advertisements, Audience Awareness, HTTPS and Library Updates

Product Updates

Dear Publishers,

March may be winding down but the team here at GTxcel is enjoying the madness and is in full swing executing many exciting new features for you.  Here are a few of the items we are working on.

Advertisements
As the world continues to become more mobile, so should your content!  Starting in April, if you have opted into fractional and full-page ad placement for the Reading View, we will begin displaying the extracted ad text by default as an enhancement.  This enhancement can also be “turned off” if you prefer the extracted text not show. If you choose to turn the text off it still remains behind the screen and is available to screen readers. We highly recommend you review your fractional and full-page ads in April to be sure you are in favor of this change.  This enhancement will make your ad content more readable for phone users and low vision readers.

For fractional ads, the text will display within a light-box.  This allows users on a phone to scroll to a more readable view of the text within the ad and supports web accessibility efforts.

For full page ads, the text will display below the fold.

If you are placing full-page ads yourself and would like to take advantage of this new feature, please contact your customer success team for more information.

Audience Awareness
In order to make informed decisions about your content, it’s good to understand where your readers are coming from.  Is your demographic mostly desktop, phone, or tablet? Have you seen a gradual trend to a more mobile population or are your desktop numbers remaining fairly consistent? In addition, it’s important to understand trends in the overall market.  We thought it might be nice to provide you with some general stats from across all of our titles regarding reader access.  Below is an aggregate breakdown of all views for titles within the GTxcel family (14.8 million) and what device they are using to enjoy their digital editions.

Desktop: 41%  |  Phone: 33%  |  Tablet: 26%

Up Next
HTTPs upgrades
As many of you are aware, in July 2018 Google began labeling all nonsecure websites. This has shaped the expectation that all URLs should now reside on a secure URL (HTTPS.)  In an effort to stay current, we will begin upgrading all titles not currently on HTTPS to HTTPS in May.  There will be a one time $150 fee to support this upgrade added to your monthly invoice.  There will be no annual fee going forward. If you have any questions or concerns about this change, please reach out to your Customer Success Team.

Library Updates
In the coming months, we will be releasing new features for your library page.  These features will include the ability to advertise, place videos, place RSS feeds, or add an article category section.  If you are interested in any of those features, we are looking for a few early adopters to join our beta launch.  Please contact your Customer Success Team if you want to join us in this exciting beta program.GTxcel is committed to continuing to evolving our product to support the digital world. Thank you for continuing to partner with us and we appreciate your business.

Sincerely,
JoAnn Mauro
Senior Director of Customer Success

Need Help?
The Digital Help Desk is the process for communicating with GTxcel regarding new title setups, questions, and technical issues for the Web Reader and/or Apps.

You can submit a request to us through the Request Help button located in the Publisher Dashboard or call the support number: 800-609-8994, option 3.
Contact Us GraphicContact Support
8AM - 5PM EST
Monday to Friday
800-609-8994, option 3
Response Times
General Question/Requests – A Customer Success team Member will begin working on your request within one to two hours of receipt. We will complete the request as soon as possible; we aim to have all requests completed within 24 hours.