Blackwell Schuyler Pham

Condé Nast Publications was topped by nearly every rival- public or private, with only about 3% of its ad revenue coming from digital in 2008. This year, Condé Nast has decided to jump into the digital game with the rest of their competitors. It has just eliminated its 13-year-old CondéNet, which sold ad space on Style.com, in favor of a more consolidated unit that would Brides.com and Portfolio’s digital operation: Condé Nast Digital. However, many of the existing as strategies will stay the same, and there will be no new incentive for the sale of digital ad space for the major publications. Additionally, there will still be a separation between the print and digital sides, which some advertisers cite as a potential hindrance Condé Nast’s online success. Condé Nast Digital will be marketing their “27 online brands’ 52 million monthly visitors.” Only .)11 of their sites saw enough traffic in the last month to reach the Nielsen threshold; these included Wired News, Epicurious, Reddit, Portfolio, Ars Technica, Glamour, Concierge, Vanity Fair, Men.Style.com, The New Yorker and Teen Vogue.

With such a heirarchy between their print and digital products, will the publisher remain competive in the market? Or will the relationship between the two need to change? (Their home magazine, Domino, is getting ready to close, adding to the list of magazines that the publisher has had to close in the last year.)

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AdAge asked TubeMogul, a web-analytics firm, to study the viewing trends of the first 8 episodes of the 50 “highest-profile” web series. This included titles such as MyDamnChannel’s “You Suck at Photoshop,” EQAL’s “LG15: The Resistance,” Crackle’s “Hot Hot Los Angeles,” and Michael Eisner’s “Back On Topps” and “Prom Queen.” The trend was that from the first to second episode, web series collectively lost 64% of their audience. It is typical for a web series to have a big first episode, but then decline from their. Many do not make it past the tenth episode.

Why is this? Most web series are attempting to recreate the TV model of a returning and growing audience. It is crucial for them to keep an audience because brands advertising on/around the web series are paying according to the old TV model based on audience numbers.

Internet users are fickle, and today, being featured on YouTube’s front page might not even break 100,000 views, whereas it might have provided 500,000 views a year ago. The CEO of MyDamnChannel explains that it is necessary to pay for distribution in order to achieve success.

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mmary: The once lucrative ‘newsweekly’ magazine category, with titles including U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, and Time, is taking a hit during this economic recession. U.S. News & World Report initially thought about becoming a bi-weekly or monthly publication, but ultimately decided to abandon print altogether by the end of 2008, reverting to a digital only publication. It appears that Newsweek will drop out of the category as well, leaving Time as the last US title in the traditional newsweekly category.

“Magazine advertising pages fell 11.7 percent in 2008,” and this included advertiser categories like cars, pharmaceuticals and financial services which the newsmagazine category relied upon. Nonetheless, Time was able to gain a $50 million profit in 2008. Executives at Time Warner stated that they were able to cut costs, and media buyers also noteD that although Time and Newsweek cold a 1/3 fewer ad pages in 2008 compared to 2004, Time sold more of them at higher prices. Another advantage for Time is that it has the large TimeWarner catalog of publications to help leverage its operation costs.

Overall, we’re seeing a trend in the newsmagazine in which the titles are not so much in the business of telling the news as they are in providing a commentary of the news. This is providing a shrinkage of editorial staff and operating costs.

It is interesting to see how Time and its competitors are choosing to adapt to the decline in print subscriptions and decrease in advertising money.

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