As SpinMedia, Web Publisher Aims to Lift Smaller Sites

In the race for Internet advertising, could a few dozen runner-up blogs win in the end?

That is the goal of Buzzmedia, a Los Angeles-based company that owns or sells advertising for more than 40 Web sites that cater to young pop-culture obsessives, like Celebuzz and JustJared for celebrity news and Stereogum, Idolator and Brooklyn Vegan for music.

Individually, many of its sites do not lead their categories. For news about alternative music, for example, Stereogum lags behind Pitchfork in audience and influence; for celebrity gossip, Celebuzz trails TMZ and others.

But altogether, Buzzmedia’s sites draw 41 million people each month, according to comScore. That is more than some of Buzzmedia’s main competitors, like Gawker Media (32 million) or Mashable (5.6 million); BuzzFeed had 25 million visitors last December, according to comScore, although BuzzFeed says the number was 40 million.

On Monday, in a move that could help elevate Buzzmedia, the company will rename itself SpinMedia, after Spin magazine, which it bought last year. It will also introduce a site for preteenagers, HeartsandFoxes, as well as technological changes to try to keep readers lingering longer and track them as they move from one device to another.

“The content experience in 2013 needs to be anywhere, anytime, on mobile, desktop or smartphone; it needs to be current and instantaneous,” Steve Hansen, the chief executive, said. “What we need to do is evolve the user experience to take advantage of that.”

Dealing with one publisher for dozens of sites can make business easy for advertisers, said Tony Effik, a managing director at the digital advertising agency R/GA.

“The problem with dealing with niche pop-culture sites is that, if you’re a big brand, you don’t want to go and do 50 deals with people like this,” Mr. Effik said.

But SpinMedia must also convince advertisers that its 41 million readers are more than just dozens of disconnected audiences. The company has also had growing pains lately: it raised $15 million in investments, but laid off 50 employees, almost 20 percent of its staff.

To connect the audiences of its sites, SpinMedia’s new platform can track reader behavior and recommend articles from across its network. Someone reading a Celebuzz item about Justin Timberlake, for example, can be pointed to similar articles on JustJared, Spin or Celebslam. Advertisers can also sponsor particular topics across multiple sites.

Like other Web companies, SpinMedia is emphasizing video, as well as branded content — features created with advertisers, which are increasingly common but controversial for blurring the line between advertising and editorial content.

“We know that consumers don’t care if the content they are consuming is editorial driven or brand driven as long as it’s great,” said Doug Rohrer, SpinMedia’s chief revenue officer. (In an interview, SpinMedia executives also said their sites preserved editorial integrity.)

The value of a large aggregated audience remains unclear compared with a more dedicated one.

Spin, for example, has notched up its competition against Pitchfork since July, when Buzzmedia bought the magazine (and within weeks shut down its print edition). Spin’s 870,000 readers now closely challenge Pitchfork’s 1.1 million. But comScore’s figures show that visitors to Pitchfork spend more than quadruple the time as visitors to Spin.

Pitchfork also shuns many now-standard Web site features, like comments on articles. And while Pitchfork also publishes branded content, its president, Chris Kaskie, said the company turns down many such deals over the issue of control.

“Our job is to protect our readers and make sure that whatever we do is adding value to their experience,” Mr. Kaskie said. “Doing anything more than that would make us feel ugly. Whether that makes for a more effective ad campaign is not something we really want to think about doing.”

Of course, SpinMedia wants to be the winner, not just the runner-up, and Mr. Hansen said the company’s changes are meant to help reach that goal.

“You can’t have a portfolio of brands that are all market leaders,” Mr. Hansen said. “That being said, I want to focus on Idolator, Celebuzz, Buzznet, in their respective categories. They have the potential to evolve into market leaders. We have to do a lot of work. That is what this company is focusing on.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/business/media/as-spinmedia-web-publisher-aims-to-lift-smaller-sites.html?partner=rss&emc=rss