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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS

Hearst Touts 2010 Gains
Wednesday, March 24, 2010

All publishers are jockeying for position and scraping their balance sheets for signs of good news. Hearst, for instance, is trying to get out in front of the usual print-is-dying narrative this week with rounds of press releases and executive interviews.

Chief marketing officer Michael Clinton tells Forbes.com that April ad sales were up 12% compared to a year ago and that May is up 17% for the top 13 titles in the portfolio. Clinton tells Forbes that advertisers are returning to print. Of course, almost all of the numbers for early 2010 are going to benefit from the dismal declines of 2009. To paraphrase beat novelist Richard Farina, just about anything looks like up from there. Nevertheless, Clinton says that the consumer packaged goods and beauty categories appear to be driving growth in lead women’s titles like Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping.

Meanwhile on the Web, Hearst is claiming a substantial ad revenue hike in the last year and strong traffic growth at its new brand RealBeauty.com and legacy brand Esquire.com. RealBeauty.com launched last fall with the promise of an interactive makeover tool that would become the centerpiece of the site. That tool is now live and lets visitors see how they will look under a variety of makeovers, including hairstyle, makeup and even weight loss. It will identify the products that will help users in their personal renewal projects. The tool was developed in partnership with virtual makeover tech company Modiface. Hearst Magazines Digital Media says the makeover tools will be fully portable, available both on the mobile Web site and as results that can be posted on members’ Facebook pages.

About 60% of traffic to Hearst sites is going to stand-alone Web brands like RealBeauty, Chuck Cordray, SVP and general manager Hearst Magazines Digital, tells Forbes. He expects a 30% rise in online ad sales this year based on early returns for 2010. Hearst tells minonline that it has seen display ad sales rise 75% in Q1 2010 over the same period two years ago. The company will be launching a teen-oriented network of sites this year as well as relaunching its Popular Mechanics brand online.

Cordray tells minonline that RealBeauty has gotten quite a head of steam in short order. “We have had major month-over-month gains, with February a new high at 700,000 uniques from nothing,” he says. The site launched in September.

Also trending well for Hearst is a venerable print brand that never seemed to get its due traffic online...until now. Esquire.com went from 1.2 million uniques in January 2009 to 2.2 million in January this year, according to min's exclusive Digital Media Boxscores (see this Monday's issue). The 84% audience growth and 217% hike in page views (over 23 million) is attributable to better print-to-Web coordination among the editorial teams and stronger syndication from syndication partners Yahoo and MSN.

In Monday's min, we will review the year-over-year traffic statistics for January 2009 vs. January 2010 across over 100 magazine-branded Web sites.



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