Time Inc's two big new media pushes create a model for other custom publishers.

Time Inc (itself a custom publisher) is making waves this week with two advances that could create new platforms for other custom publishers.

First up : Time Inc. begins rollout of ambitious mobile plan - Mobile Marketer - Media:

"Time Inc., the world’s largest magazine publisher, sees mobile as part of a troika comprising social networking and video that will determine its digital media future.

"Starting next week, the New York-based company will roll out a series of iPhone and WAP Web sites and iPhone applications for media properties such as Golf.com and CNNMoney.com, which is the joint portal for Fortune and Money magazines. Mobile will also be part of a test to gauge the appetite of consumers willing to pay for content."

Next up is:

Time Inc.'s Mine Magazine is a Printed RSS Feed | Sustainability | Fast Company:

"The news just keeps getting more personal. Hyper-specialized blogs, RSS feeds, and personalized Google homepages let us focus on what we care about and tune out the rest. Thus far, personalized news has been limited to the Internet, but Time Inc. is bringing it to the printed word with mine, a five-issue, 10-week, experimental magazine that allows readers to select five Time Warner/American Express Co. magazines that Time editors will combine into a personalized magazine with 56 possible combinations. Essentially, mine is a printed, expanded RSS feed. Magazines available to the program include Time, Sports Illustrated, Food & Wine, Real Simple, Money, In Style, Golf, and Travel + Leisure.

"Ads in the mine run will all be for the Lexus 2010 RX SUV--but with personalized messages for each subscriber targeting their interests."

"mine's experimental run is free, with a 36-page print edition available to the first 31,000 respondents and an online version available to 200,000 others. The online edition may not be of much interest to readers skilled in the art of Internet news surfing, but mine's printed edition brings an interesting concept to the table: the minimalization of paper waste with personalized magazines and newspapers. Instead of subscribing to five magazines, why not just subscribe to one that has everything you want inside? And instead of subscribing to The New York Times, The Star Ledger, and your hometown newspaper, why not subscribe to a mash-up of all three?"

While Time Inc. obviously has the library of content to make this happen they aren't the only ones. Imagine someone planning a trip to Hawaii. They could have a custom magazine created for them that would highlight their interests in a way that would allow advertisers to microtarget. Publishers could send a hard copy, a PDF or here's the really interesting bit, a custom iPhone-style app that would have transactional elements like coupons or entertainment booking options.

Health and financial services clients could also create similar custom content on the fly. The increased cost in printing these single issues would be minimal because the advertising would be very targeted. It will be interesting to see if mine turns out to be a gold mine.