Tag Archives: Future Publishing

CEO of Future Publishing on lucrative niche markets

Great interview with Future’s Stevie Spring in PPA’s Magazine News print mag. Shame we can’t find it online.

Some nuggets:

Future’s business model is akin to business publishers in that it fosters close relationships with niche audiences or ‘hardcore hobbyists’
Ads are a super targeted. Cycling ads appear in a cycling magazine
Niche advertisers are offered a ‘media nirvana’ the generalist mags only dream of
Ad revenue is up 50 per cent in the past year
Its GamesRadar.com site has 12m uniques – The Sun has 10m
It plans to complement GamesRadar and BikeRadar with MusicRadar
You can be nice while you’re being an agent of change in a huge organisation
High cover prices and English language only exports means its doing well overseas
Sky Movies magazine has a circulation of 3.7m and is ‘partnership publishing’ – which uses Future’s editorial expertise, resources and market knowledge to increase loyalty to a brand

If someone at PPA.co.uk wants to email us a link to the full article, we’d be happy to post it.

Dennis to follow up monkeymag.co.uk with Gizmo site launch

Dennis Publishing is building on the success (not that we know exact user figures) of digital only lads mag monkeymag.co.uk with a website that aims to exploit the lucrative gadgets ‘n’ geeks market – called Gizmo.

Free and fornightly from 11 March, Gizmo copy monkeymag’s popular mix of content aggregation – namely magazines, websites and video to review and demonstrate products.

The Guardian reports Gizmo will target ABC1 men aged 25 to 45 from its database of 1.5 million male magazine readers of its titles such as PC Pro and Mac User.

Positive new launch Blah, Blah from Bruce Sandell, head of new product development at Dennis Publishing said the mag will bring a new format to the sector. And no doubt some decent advertising opportunities we think.

Ross Burridge, reviews editor at Dennis’ PC Pro has been appointed as editor.

Yet another gadget mag launch for men might seem a brave move in an already busy market, but each launch seems to do okay. As long as you target men that is – remeber Future Publishing’s decision to fold its female blog Gadget Candy.com into T3, after two years of toughing it out?

Is there such a finite marketing for girl geeks that the likes of Popgadget and Shiny Media’s popular Shiny Shiny blog are more than enough?

Until the lack of females in IT ‘crisis’ is reversed, this is unlikely to change anytime soon.

See – no Yahoo / Microsoft merger talk here guvnor. Just real social issues affecting the UK – like what gadgets to buy.

Brands missing out by not connecting with ‘Lady geeks’

Consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers are to miss out on £600m by not connecting with women, says Saatchi & Saatchi report called Lady Geek.

Around 35 per cent of women polled said they’d spend more on gadgets if targeted better or had guidance in stores and on websites.

Perhaps the issues raised in the report may have helped save Future’s Gadget Candy.

Future folds girls gadget blog into men’s print title T3

Is it competion in the market or is it really tricky to specifically target women with dedicated tech content?

Who knows why Future Publishing may have decided to fold its female blog Gadget Candy.com into T3, after two years of churning it out.

Strong competition from Popgadget and Shiny Media’s popular Shiny Shiny blog could have been a factor in the blogs relegation to a column inT3.

Read more at paidContent.org:UK (which is already pumping out must-read content in its first week – congrats!).

Online ads signal change in Future

Magazine publisher Future has seen online ad revenues increase by 66 per cent during the six months to March 31st this year.

Reporting pre-tax profits of £8.6 million, compared with a loss of £1.6m last year, the publisher said that online ads now accounted for 13 per cent of ad revenues overall.

The increase in profits, which is thought to have been the result of senior appointments and higher investment in its online division, was delivered in spite of first half revenues slipping from £107m last to £96.3m.

The alliterative Stevie Spring, chief executive of Future told MediaGuardian that no-one should “write off magazines,” despite the growth of online revenues.

“There are some things that you want to read on the bog, in the bath, in bed … and there are some things where you just want a quick fact or just want a review or want to add your view to an online forum,” she said.

UPDATE: Seb Bishop, president of pay for search network Mviva (previously espotting.com) is joining Future as independent non-executive director.

Roger Parry, Future’s chairman said Seb’s, “creative background, internet business experience and Anglo-American focus are a perfect fit for our new strategy.”

Seb is also chairman of Steak Media Limited, a UK search engine marketing agency and sits on the board of Adjug Limited, an online advertising exchange.

Future publishing appoints Richard Foster as digital director

It seems Future is getting its digital ducks in order after appointing Richard Foster of behavioural targeting firm Revenue Science.

Can Foster help squeeze more revenue from Future’s 3.5 million unique users? Only time will tell.

It’s interesting to recall Foster’s frustration with advertisers in a New Media Age (NMA) article back in December 2006. Apparently there was still a lack of understanding of behavioural targeting and its benefits a whole year after its arrival in the UK in 2005.

For those of you who are still none the wiser, behavioural targeting uses cookies to track the behaviour of users across multiple websites and is another way to “serve inventory like search and contextual advertising”, according to the NMA piece.

So basically taking what Double Click does with ads and applying it to web magazine content the user may like or is it just about the ads publishers display?

Read more about Foster’s and others’ appointments on Brand Republic.

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