Meredith and Hearst are taking two of their online properties to print. As web-based advertising becomes more and more fractured will this be a growing trend?
From Mediaweek. Read full story here
Excerpt from the story-
Is reverse publishing becoming a growing trend for magazines?
Normally, magazines launch Web sites from print brands. But Hearst
is going in the opposite direction with the launch of Light &
Delish, a bookazine based on content from Delish, a food site it
launched in 2008 with MSN.
Meredith, meanwhile, is moving forward with a magazine it tested
last year based on Mixing Bowl, an online social network it built
around food. Meredith published a second issue of
Mixing Bowl.com magazine last
week and plans to do another this year while exploring other such
affinity-based titles.
In Hearst’s case, Light & Delish will hit stores Feb. 2 with a
distribution of 300,000. Priced at a $9.99 cover price, the
bookazine is meant to be consumer driven, although it will carry
three paid ads from Kraft, which was a launch sponsor of
Delish.
Light & Delish is one of several bookazines the company plans
to create this year as it looks for low-cost ways to serve up new
revenue. Hearst published three bookazines in 2009, based on Good
Housekeeping and Country Living, and expects to do at least four
this year based on its existing magazines and Web-only brands,
which include
RealBeauty.com, RealAge.com and
Kaboodle.com. Hearst also hopes to turn Light & Delish into a
series.
At a time when it’s hard to whip up excitement for magazine
advertising, it’s fitting that Hearst sees print as a way to feed
its online growth rather than the other way around. Just a year
after launch, Delish ranked No. 9 among food sites with 3.6 million
unique visitors in December 2009, per Nielsen Online, and the
company is eager to fuel that growth.
Meanwhile, Hearst saw double-digit ad-page declines last year
across its magazines like O, the Oprah Magazine; Harper’s Bazaar;
and Cosmopolitan. The bookazine also is seen as a way to promote
Hearst’s other brands like Good Housekeeping and Country Living,
where many of the publication’s recipes come from.
-8.0% in Oct.-Dec. 2011 versus 2010, while ad revenues over the same
period were -4.9%. That turned what were -1.1% and +2.1% respective
Jan.-Sept. differentials to -3.1% and +0.1% at year-end.
