ci-book™ • One of the most feature-rich web-to-publish solutions on the market

Introduction

ci-book™ offers a wide range of functions and, according to a survey by Melaschuk-Medien, is one of the offerings on the market that enables companies to publish their advertising and communication media cross-medially and thus in different media formats for numerous communication channels.

However, with the exception of the provision of advertising material in the merchandise environment and for the enormous number of different messenger services and applications, ci-book™ is one of the few nine per cent of providers that also cover the increasing demand for the transmission of content in the area of "content marketing".

ci-book™ does not have to shy away from comparison with other web-to-print and web-to-publish providers, which is why d-serv GmbH is reproducing the press release on the market overview published by Melaschuk-Medien on 4 March 2019 with the kind permission of Melaschuk-Medien.

Cross-media solutions dominate the market overview web-to-publish

Friedberg/Hessen, 04.03.19. The market overview Web-to-Publish is an established, freely accessible platform for researching web-based solutions and services in the areas of marketing, product communication, publishing and cross-media. As every year, the data were brought up to date again by the providers.

Systems that produce cross-media, i.e. support both print and digital output channels, account for 67 percent of the market overview. Print solutions are represented with 24 percent, 7 percent exclusively support digital channels. This includes software for creating apps and e-papers.

A high proportion of the systems include functions such as individualization (90 percent), online data check (82 percent), print file upload (77 percent) and personalization (76 percent). In personalization, documents are generated automatically on the basis of structured data sources, for example for mailings. Three quarters of the systems have their own or integrated media database and more than half provide functions for planning and controlling marketing activities. The system-supported publication of advertising media in media channels, however, only enables 21 percent of the solutions (see function "Media planning, booking"). This includes the integrated booking of advertisements in newspapers or online channels.

The area of content marketing as a strategic marketing instrument was newly included in the market overview and is only covered by 9 percent of the systems offered. This involves the creation and distribution of information-rich content in order to address specific target groups with high-quality content across various communication channels and to bind them permanently.

In the area of database-supported automation, around 70 percent of the systems each have a product database or database publishing functions. The collaborative creation of publications via editorial systems is carried out by 38 percent of the market overview entries.

The market overviews with around 250 supplier entries, 140 systems and over 50 service offers are supplemented and linked with news articles and technical articles. Using filter criteria, users can interactively select areas of application and functions and quickly gain an overview on the structured detail pages. Because of these guidelines, the market overview has already been awarded the Innovation Prize IT of the Initiative Mittelstand six times in a row. [...]

Melaschuk-Medien offers vendor-neutral consulting and workshops with a focus on marketing, web-to- print, web-to-publish and cross-media. The services include requirement analyses, system selection, process optimisation and profitability analyses for companies from industry, trade, public institutions as well as printing and media companies. Owner Ira Melaschuk is a lecturer at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal in the master's course in printing and media technology. Her book, "Web-to-Publish | Web- to-Media: Guidelines for Cross-Media-Production " has established itself as a standard work and is used as basic literature at universities and educational institutions.