With companies jumping on the digital subscription bandwagon, from all angles, the market is suddenly awash with a plethora of publications covering all manner of subjects.

The future of these digital magazines lies in the cost and whether the publication houses see it as a viable business proposition after testing the waters for a number of months, or even a year. When you begin to weigh up the initial outlay versus the amount of sales required to break-even it does appear to be quite a tall order. Whether the publication house pushes their magazine through the App Store or via a third party such as Zinio they face charges or portions of profit disappearing before their eyes.

Project's world's first gyroscope cover developed by Seven

In many cases publishers have been cutting corners by directly placing a PDF online as their digital version. Clearly this is an extremely cost-effective method for distribution, but is it doing any favours for the market? Looking at what magazines such as Project (and their agency, Seven) are doing is the benchmark and will surely attract the masses. But at the end of the day if you can't fund the development then what options are you left with?

One magazine to bypass all external charges from the likes of Adobe and Apple are Playboy. Due to Apple's strict guidance on content the Playboy publication could not be sold through the App Store, so what did they do? They created their own, web-based, tablet friendly, publication viewer. Now all users have to do is subscribe and they are presented with an online experience that reflects the Adobe equivalent, no app required. Of course there is the initial outlay for development but from there it is all about making money and not shelling out copious amounts for the pleasure of selling your own content.

So where does it go from here? How do publishers turn their digital content into profit? One answer and not a good one for the reader… advertising. National Geographic digital magazine has been in circulation for around a year and last month saw it's first issue with adverts included. These are not just adverts advertising their own sellable items but also third party companies. I guess it makes sense, it mirrors the same process as an online environment, sell your advertising space. The reader, unfortunately, is then hit with a barrage of adverts when all they want to do is read the content.

Is Lexus' immersive tablet advertising the new way to get noticed?

Will the influx of advertising turn readers away? It will all depend on the interactivity included in the advertising space. I've seen some fantastic examples of immersive advertising from the likes of iMeet, Dasani, Qwest and Lexus. The problem is that these types of adverts are few and far between. Will the others take their lead or stick to their flat adverts and hope they work?

The proof will be in the pudding. If trackable inline magazine advertising proves to be profit making then the future for digital publications is bright, if not, then we'll most probably see libraries of flat PDFs.