Demise of Condé Nast’s Style.com, Glossier’s E-Commerce Strategy, News Layoffs, Legacy Media Success Stories, TFP’s Infographic Pick of the Week
Welcome to Technology for Publishing’s roundup of news, stories of interest, and tips for media industry pros! This week, we’re sharing posts about the shutdown of Condé Nast’s Style.com marketplace, how Glossier is using data to bridge content and e-commerce sites, more layoffs in the news industry, how some niche publishers are making legacy media work, and more.
Condé Nast announced its shuttering Style.com—just nine months after sinking $100 million into the launch of the global multibrand e-commerce site. Traffic to the site is now being redirected to Farfetch, a marketplace for high-end boutiques that it had earlier invested in. According to a New York Times report, the move signals a “stunning strategic backtrack” for Condé Nast, reflecting “turmoil in the glossy magazine industry.” While publishers industrywide are trying to build new sources of revenue, including digital marketplaces, Condé Nast’s Matt Starker acknowledged in the article that creating content and running an e-commerce business require different skill sets. Other problems included rollout delays, poor sales, and staff turnover, the report says.- Meanwhile, Glossier, a skin care e-commerce site, shared lessons learned since spinning off the popular blog “Into the Gloss” three years ago. As it told Digiday, getting blog readers to buy related products wasn’t a slam dunk, as the team had assumed at launch. “We had to focus on bringing the properties closer together and be explicitly clear about their relationship,” says Glossier CTO Bryan Mahoney. To build that bridge, Glossier turned to technology that tracks behavioral data from both sites “to better position its readers to become shoppers and vice versa,” the article says. That and other cross-site strategies are working: Glossier said in April it is hiring 28o new staffers this year and moving into bigger headquarters in New York.
- As a Poynter report details, the publishing industry’s struggle to adapt to the realities of the digital era continued this week: Time Inc. announced its restructuring will mean 300 layoffs, HuffPost cut 39 jobs as part of parent Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo, and Vocativ laid off its entire editorial staff as it shifts to video production and partnerships. At the center of it all is the continuing dominance of Google and Facebook, the article says, leaving publishers to “fight over scraps.” In fact, recent research shows the duopoly took in about 71% of all U.S. digital advertising sales in Q1 and accounted for 82% of all digital advertising growth. “People make an investment in producing content in hopes that they’ll get paid,” says industry analyst Alan Mutter in the article. “But that’s not what’s happening.”
- However, there are a few publishers out there—mostly in the enthusiast and niche categories—that are not only making a go of so-called legacy media but growing, according to a Min post. Print enthusiast publications have a “special resilience,” Active Interest Media’s Sharon Houghton says. Backpacker’s combined print and digital, for instance, is up 12.2% and has seen a 42.8% increase in desktop year over year, the article notes. What’s more, Houghton says, “We see an average read time of 43 minutes. People are engaged.” Quality content over scale is also key: “In print, instead of chasing celebrity cover subjects, we’re tackling stories that we know resonate with people—and trying hard to be different from every other magazine on the rack,” says Joe Brown, EIC of Popular Science, another pub that’s bucking the trend.
On the Technology for Publishing Blog
- With social media algorithm changes and growing use of ad blocking tech, traffic to many digital media sites took a hit last year. Check out our new infographic pick to see how email marketing is helping publishers fight back.
- TFP’s Media Metrics latest roundup highlights key reports on consumer attitudes about the role of news media, cord cutting, newspaper industry employment, ad fraud, and much more.
- ICYMI: Monica Murphy’s latest InDesign CC Tip takes a look at the redesigned New Document dialog, an update aimed at providing consistency across Adobe products.
Image: Elen Weinstein/The New York Times
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Posted by: Monica Sambataro
