Magazine publishers have been snapping up small technology firms in hopes of offering a compelling menu of digital services to keep marketers from taking their ad dollars elsewhere on the Web. Now, they’re about to find out whether that strategy is working.
The latest example involves Conde Nast, which designed a shopping and social-networking promotion for the retailer Dillard’s. The promotion, to kick off next week, uses tools from news-aggregation site Reddit, which Conde Nast bought in 2006. It lets visitors to Dillard’s Web site vote on merchandise that later will be featured in online ads.
Usually when publishers acquire technology companies it’s to spruce up their own Web sites. But increasingly publishers such as Conde Nast and Meredith are drawing on the technology to create advertising campaigns for marketers.
This takes publishers further into the realm of marketing services. Instead of simply selling marketers ad space, they’re rolling up their sleeves and designing the promotions as well. For the next five months, visitors to the Dillard’s Web site will be able to rank products featured in a top-10 list selected by Conde Nast’s Lucky magazine and fashion Web site Style.com. The fashion lists will rotate seasonally, giving visitors the chance to rank new items every two weeks. The top-rated item on the list then will appear in Dillard’s online ads running on nine Conde Nast Web sites, including Teen Vogue, Glamour, Style.com and Vanity Fair.
Conde Nast Media Group has created print ads for Dillard’s since 2006, but with the new campaign, it’s trying to expand into the digital world. Dillard’s, which doesn’t work with a digital-marketing agency and does all its advertising work in-house, says it was looking for an innovative way to create ads on the Web.
Conde Nast, owned by Advance Publications, isn’t alone in trying to make this leap. Meredith, whose magazine titles include Better Homes & Gardens and Family Circle, bought three digital agencies during the past two years, including digital-ad agency Genex and word-of-mouth marketing firm New Media Strategies. Hearst, which publishes Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, has also made a string of acquisitions, including social-shopping site Kaboodle and, most recently, a question-and-answer tool called Answerology.
”You try to best leverage the assets you control,” says Richard Beckman, chief marketing officer of Conde Nast Publications. He is also president of Conde Nast Media Group, the publishing company’s integrated-marketing unit, which does corporate sales and marketing for its magazines and Web sites as well as creating ad campaigns.
Related Videos
