• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 2, 2011

Aiming to reinvent the newspaper for the digital age, News Corp. Wednesday unveiled The Daily, its much-anticipated daily news offering for the iPad. The tablet newspaper promises to deliver up to 100 pages of content each day that package text, 360-degree photography and HD-quality video and graphics to capture consumers who have bypassed print.

The new Daily app, now available in Apple's App store, is being sold at a subscription cost of 99 cents a week or $39.99 a year. It will be offered free for the first two weeks, courtesy of Verizon.

At a launch event in New York, News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said its readers would "enjoy the engaging design of a professionally edited magazine, the immediacy of the Web, the original reporting and distinctive voice of a newspaper as well as stunning photography," for the equivalent of 14 cents a day.

He added that the target audience for the new iPad app is the 50 million Americans expected to own tablet computers in the next year. Murdoch said News Corp. had invested $30 million in building the iPad app, whose business success would be defined by selling "millions" of Daily subscriptions.

The tablet-only newspaper will cover six main areas: news, sports, gossip and celebrity, opinion, arts and life, and apps and games. It lets users personalize content, such as local weather and multimedia sports packages, tailored to favorite teams. People will also be able to comment in text or audio on Daily stories and share articles on Facebook, Twitter and email.

Editor in Chief Jesse Angelo emphasized that content would be dynamic, with stories updated throughout the day, breaking news coverage and the ability to change up the front page as events warrant.

But he said he was mindful of trying not to overwhelm users with an endless information blitz. "I don't always love the experience of a whole new thing every five minutes," he said. "I like to have a great voice telling me what's worth my while."

When it comes to advertising, The Daily is offering full-page, interactive ad units that it touts as "a rich mix of branding and direct response opportunities." Apple's own iAd platform expanded to the iPad late last year. Rich media ad technology firm Medialets is powering the initial batch of ads on The Daily from launch advertisers, including HBO, Macy's, Paramount, Pepsi Max, Range Rover, Verizon, and Virgin Atlantic Airways. Agencies behind some of the ads include Chiat Day LA Media, Wunderman Media and Y&R Media.

Advertisers "can put an ad there of the highest quality," said Murdoch, speaking of The Daily app. "If you touch it, it can turn into a video." In addition to a range of interactive options for ad content, News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller said the publication would provide advertisers "all the metrics they require for their media plans."

Research firm eMarketer estimates newspapers will generate $3.2 billion in U.S. digital ad revenues this year, spanning the Web, tablets and mobile devices -- up from $3 billion in 2010. But tablet and mobile ad revenues are expected to make up only a very small portion of that total.

Even so, the tablet market is expected to explode this year, with Forrester predicting that U.S. unit sales will more than double to 24.1 million and reach 82 million by 2015. Murdoch noted that The Daily will eventually migrate to competing devices based on Google's Android OS and others. "We expect to be on all major tablets," he said.

At its launch Wednesday, Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of Internet services, said 15 million iPads had been sold to date.

The Daily also has plenty of competition, with 9,000 news apps already in the App Store, including News Corp.'s own apps for The Wall Street Journal. Those apps have been downloaded 200 million times, according to Cue. A big sticking point for the vast majority of publishers has been the inability to offer iPhone or iPad apps on a subscription basis.

But Cue indicated that subscriptions would shortly be opened up to other iPad publishers, promising an announcement on the topic "very soon." "We think subscriptions are only going to help them get more customers," he said. That could spur more magazine and newspaper publishers that have been holding back to make their way onto the iPad.

Early reviews in the App Store for The Daily should please News Corp. Based on 334 ratings, it has earned 4.5 out of 5 stars. "I think the announced subscription price is really good (0.99 cents) per week, and if the content were this good every day, I would be first in line to buy it," commented one reviewer.