Optimyz Magazine, a health and fitness magazine distributed at GoodLife Fitness gyms across Canada, is expanding into the online space with a new digital edition.

Targeting fitness-minded customers outside of the gym, Optimyz Interactive launches April 15 and will be downloadable from the Optimyz website in a two-page spread layout that will include embedded videos, interactive polls and Google Maps. Those features will also be available to advertisers. New Balance is one of the companies taking advantage of the new format, with info bubbles growing out of a New Balance shoe when the cursor is moved over certain areas.

The online format is being produced using Planet-Tek Systems technology, as part of a three-year agreement with the company.

‘It’s really making use of the medium,’ Max Brennan, publisher, Optimyz, tells MiC. ‘I feel that some publishers say they have an online version but all they’ve done is taken the print version and made it digital. That’s not taking advantage of the medium.’

The print magazine, now in its fourth year, has a circulation of 100,000 and is available on newsstands at Shoppers Drug Mart, Loblaws, Sobeys, Chapters and Indigo stores. It’s also mailed out to the portion of GoodLife’s 850,000 members that signs up to receive it.

To promote the new offering, there will be ads in the magazine and on the website, email blasts to the Optimyz and GoodLife mailing lists and posters at trade shows and in GoodLife’s 275 gyms.

‘It’s more revenue, more eyeballs, and staying with the tide of publishing and content that is changing towards more and more digital,’ Brennan says. ‘It’s also giving our customers who are digitally-oriented with their marketing another vehicle to deliver to their target.’

The combined readership of the site, the print magazine and the new digital issues is predicted to be 500,000, according to Brennan.