Rest In Peace, Blender

Blender down, now Maxim stands alone...

Alpha Media Group closed Blender magazine today, eliminating about 30 jobs and reducing its portfolio of titles to Maxim alone. The April issue of Blender out now will be its last.

The decision, delivered to Blender staff in a meeting this morning, came as part of broader changes that also included the departure of Alpha co-CEO Glenn Rosenbloom and the integration of editorial staff for Maxim and Maxim Digital.

The remaining CEO, Stephen Duggan, said in a company memo that the company was closing Blender with great sadness. "Since 2001, Blender has provided unmatched music coverage and entertainment news in its unique voice to a profoundly dedicated audience of music enthusiasts," Mr. Duggan wrote. "We are particularly grateful to the sales team and to the tremendously talented editorial staff for their hard work and commitment to Blender."

Joe Levy, who was editor in chief at Blender, was named editor in chief of the combined Maxim editorial operation. Jim Kaminsky, Maxim magazine's editor in chief, is leaving the company. Ben Madden continues as group publisher. Jay Woodruff, editor in chief of Maxim Digital, was named chief content officer at Maxim. After the changes, Alpha will continue to employ 134 staffers.

WSJ Blundered Into World Of Paid Content

The WSJ blundered into its paid content strategy, a move the usual suspects (Michael Wolff, Wired) lamented would reduce the Journal to irrelevancy. "I made the site paid because I was ignorant, “ says former Dow Jones CEO Peter Kann. “I didn’t know any better. I just thought people should pay for content.”

It's worked well for 'em though. And in my opinion, it doesn't hurt that most subscribers can go ahead and expense it on the corporate AmEx.

But - if you already provide free content - good luck getting people to pay at this point in the game, according to this article.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-wsj-can-charge-for-online-content-and-other-papers-cant-2009-3

Attack Of The Belly Fat Ads

Short of advertisers. Desperate for revenue. Sold out to direct marketers.

These ads, which typically link to sites with names such as Becky's Weight Loss or Helen's Weight Loss, often use the same exact creative -- a before-and-after photo of a woman's belly -- and tout some secret to getting rid of a gut. Users, of course, have to click on the ad to find out more.

Online advertising start-up Rubicon Project estimates that different versions of the "belly fat" ads are now being served by half the ad networks in the U.S., sometimes accounting for as much as 30% of an ad network's total revenue.

It's all part of a larger shift toward direct-response advertising as brand dollars become harder to come by. The belly-fat ads may be unappealing and jarring on some of the higher-end sites that are running them, such as MSNBC.com, but they work, and can bring more revenue than a display ad sold on a cost-per-thousand-viewers basis.

And they won't die:

But here's the bigger problem: The process of blocking belly-fat ads for publishers that don't want them is proving particularly difficult for ad networks. The creative gets placed by numerous corporations using different tags, URLs and toll-free numbers, making them hard to track and stop automatically.

And when ad networks have unsold inventory, they'll often tap another ad network to fill it, giving belly-fat ads another side door onto websites that might not want them.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=135115

Digital mags on the rise

As a disclaimer, this is PR verbiage from digital mag publisher Zmags, but some good numbers on online traffic to magazines' websites:

Don’t worry. Your magazine did not become irrelevant and your readers did not quit on you. But readers are moving online as there is so much more to get there. While titles are closed down Magazine Publishers of America found that website traffic to US consumer magazines rose 11.1 percent in last quarter of 2008 compared to last year. In addition, time spend on the titles websites increased 34.4 percent.

Important to notify here is that you do not have to go all in, when offering digital magazines. Most of Zmags customers offer digital magazines as a supplement - rather than a substitution - to hard copies. Digitize your magazine and making it available on your website is an easy way to extend your scope and get more readers.

http://blog.zmags.com/index.php/digital-magazines-on-the-rise/

Recession SEO

If you're not SEOing to "cheap ____________", you're not SEOing at all, these days:

http://www.dmnews.com/Search-shift-fuels-recession-friendly-keyword-strategy/article/128409/

Tweet You, Pay Me

Maggiano's Italian restaurant says, add us as a friend, and tweet about us, for a chance to win $100.

http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-payola-now-with-extra-cheese-2009-3

In an informal count, it seems about five to ten Twitter users are tweeting Maggiano's message every minute. Or about one every ten seconds. Maggiano's now has 1,037 followers, and is gaining dozens per minute. That's thousands (tens of thousands?) of ad impressions that Brinker International is getting for its $100 gift card (and whatever it's paying someone to run the company's Twitter account).


Remember that thing about social sites creating so many highly disposable ad impressions you'll never be able to sell them...?