June 23, 2014 Media Industry Newsletter Vol. 67 No. 25 New York, N.Y. www.minonline.com MONTHLIES' JULY AD PAGES ARE A SOMBER "BEACH PARTY." The weather in the East and Midwest is finally warm, but advertising remains stuck in an "ice age" with the monthlies' July 2014-versus-2013 ad-page differential at a sickly -9.65%. This opener for the second half is a bad sign for the critical months to come with the September clos- ings just a few weeks away. Flex (-63.84%) and Muscle & Fitness (-54.04%) got the proverbial sand kicked into their faces because July/August combos competed with sepa- rate July and August issues last year. Were it just July versus July, Flex and M&F would be a softer -26.51% and -9.71% respectively, and the cumulative differentials would be less lopsided. Scientific American's Living in the Connected World delivered a +110.14% "counterpunch." (boxscores are on pages 8 and 9) Steve Smith's Eye on Digital Media: THE RIGHT CUSTOMER IS WILLING TO PAY, BUT OFFER SOME FUN... Getting people to pay for content on digital platforms has been a persistent quest I’ve been covering since 1996, at least. We went through a number of phases in this journey, mainly calibrated to the current fortunes in online ad spend. When digital investment by marketers leveled or troughed, the cry went out: “Consumers must pay; damn their freeloading hides.” When the ad money started pouring in again, publishers were as quick as startups to pivot their rhetoric and proudly proclaim they believe in the primary role of free content to their models. No doubt about it, this time. We are somewhere between pendulum swings right now. Double-digit online ad growth, the embrace of pricier native formats and marketer attraction to even higher priced video advertising has contained the make 'em pay meme. Aside from major financials like Financial Times, (continued on page 4) ...And Money Shot: NATIVE + PROGRAMMATIC = BRAND + PERFORMANCE. The two hot topics in digital publishing these past few years—native advertising and programmatic—seem to represent diametrically opposed types of inventory with warring goals. But according to new commissioned research from Purch, the publisher of Space. com, Laptop Magazine and Top Ten Review, advertisers see these kinds of digital media as complementary and equally necessary. Across both types of advertising, marketers are looking for branding and conver- sions. A survey of brands conducted by Advertising Perceptions found, for instance, that although 71% cited branding as a primary goal of native ad formats and content marketing, 65% cited (continued on page 6) • MICHELLE LEE'S "EARLY ADMISSION" TO NYLON; NJ, YJ REDESIGNS... Page 2 • YAHOO! BEAUTY's B+ APP REVIEW; THE ATLANTIC IN ASPEN.......... Page 3 • WHY ELITE TRAVELER'S DOUG GOLLAN IS SINGING ON WISCONSIN!..... Page 5 • EYE ON AD RECALL; JULY BOXSCORES; INSIDE b2b.... Pages 7, 8, 9 and 11 • ESSENCE FESTIVAL IS A PLUS FOR TIME INC.; TASTE OF HOME...... Page 12 www.minonline.com © 2014 Access Intelligence, LLC. Federal copyright law prohibits unauthorized reproduction by any means and imposes fines of up to $100,000 for violations. PAGE 2 MIN 6/23/2014 MICHELLE LEE'S "NYLON" WELCOME WAGON. The editor-in-chief was not hired until June 18, but Nylon's recently named executive VP and chief revenue officer Dana Fields was so impressed with Michelle Lee–one of 15 can- didates–that she held an impromptu meet and greet with staff members after the interview. "Michelle is new and I am new," Fields says. "Given all the change, I wanted everyone to quickly feel comfortable. Now she can start on June 25 as a colleague, not a stranger." A key reason is that much of the staff of the young women's title are car- ryovers from the management of executive editor Ashley Baker and husband-and- wife co-founders Marvin and Jaclynn Jarrett. min reported on May 26 the messy SHRED ALERT! HAIM aftereffects from the sale to the Mark Luzzoto-led Diversis Capital, and it let’s ROCKdiscuss... RITA ORA LILY ALLEN ELLIE GOULDING was he who hired Fields. THIS LYKKE LI "I had zero to do with the sale," says Fields. "I told everybody to continue THE KICK-ASS NEW BANDS YOU CAN’T IGNORE RECORD STORES WAY! ARE HERE TO STAY doing their jobs, and they have been great." Among those who helped in the Lee nylonmag.com interview were fashion director Joseph Errico and spinoff Nylon Guys executive editor David Walters. "I love Dana's management style," Lee says, who was recommended to Fields. "I'm confi- dent that I will have a positive effect on Nylon." Lee's background helps, in that celebrity (past InTouch editor-in-chief and Hollywood.com senior VP of content), fashion (The Daily Front Row 2002 launch team) and youth (CosmoGirl! 1999 launch team) matches Nylon's emphases. The intangible is her fre- quent appearances on television (Good Morning America, Today, etc.), which will be a wel- come change from the little exposure that Nylon previously received. Fields' Nylon hirings continue, with an associate publisher and West Coast director on deck. "I'm excited about second-half 2014, and I'm even more excited about 2015, when we will have a full year to showcase a strong, multiplatform brand." IRAQ GOES FROM "WAR BONDS" TO THE END OF. The June 30 Time cover line could have easily run in May 1975 as The End of South Vietnam. The fact that thousands of American lives were lost in Vietnam and Iraq will forever be in contention, and Iran may have gone from bad guys to good guys because of its desire to protect Shiite Muslim interests in Iraq. How different things were in January 1981, when just-freed Iranian hostage Malcolm Kalp urged Americans to "buy Iraqi war bonds" after he was among the 52 held in captivity for 14 months. THE OLD AND THE NEW AT "NATIONAL JOURNAL" AND "YOGA JOURNAL." Both magazines redesigned, and maybe YJ's spirit of Om can soothe NJ's cov- erage of dysfunction. The new covers are on the right. Editor-in-Chief: Steven Cohn ([email protected]) 203/899-8437 Digital Media Editor: Steve Smith ([email protected]) 302/691-5331 Editorial Director: Bill Mickey ([email protected]) 203/899-8427 VP Content: Tony Silber; Director of Business Development: Scott Gentry ([email protected]); Director of Market Development: Laurie M. Hofmann ([email protected]); Marketing Director: Kate Schaeffer ([email protected]); Assistant Marketing Manager: Marly Zimmerman ([email protected]); Associate Editors: Arti Patel (apa- [email protected]) and Caysey Welton ([email protected]); Production Manager: Yelena Shamis ([email protected]); Editorial Intern: Samantha Wood (swood@accessintel. com); Senior Account Executive: Tania Babiuk ([email protected]); Contributing Editor: Cathy Applefeld Olson; Boxscores ([email protected]) SVP, Media Group: Diane Schwartz; Access Intelligence, LLC President & Chief Executive Officer: Don Pazour; Division President: Heather Farley; Subscriptions/Client Services: 888-707-5814; List Sales: Statlistics, 203-778-8700; Advertising: 203-899-8498; Reprints: Wright’s Media, 877-652-5295 ([email protected]); Editorial Offices: 10 Norden Place, Norwalk, CT 06855; 88 Pine Street, Suite 510, New York, NY 10005; Faxes: 203-854-6735, 212-621-4879; www.minonline.com Access Intelligence LLC, 4 Choke Cherry Road, 2nd Floor, Rockville, MD 20850; Ph: 301-354-2000 Published 2014 © by Access Intelligence LLC. Distributed via email and online. For email and postal address changes, allow 2 weeks notice. Send to: Client Services or call 888-707-5814. For advertising info contact 301/ 354-1629. Contents may not be reproduced in any form without written permission. Subscription Rate: $1049 MIN 6/23/2014 PAGE 3 APP REVIEW: YAHOO! BEAUTY ENTERS THE CLUTTERED SALON. Yahoo! doesn’t call its new multi-platform verticals "feeds" or "portals" anymore. They describe the content as a series of responsive "tiles"—screen-filling images with bold headlines that flow into whatever screen is available and whose content zooms in and out of the tile without requiring a page load. For its newly launched Yahoo! Beauty Web app, led by cosmetic businesswoman Bobbi Brown, the portal uses the same design template in- troduced with David Pogue’s Yahoo! Tech months ago—a wall of telescoping tiles, some with animated GIFs, and large native ad units that could easily be mistaken for editorial. The content strategy here seems to be "less is more," but overall there's less from the content partners and more Yahoo! itself. Brown is prominent, in features where she shares tips, interviews celebs and even illustrates her own Yahoo! office makeover. There is even a "Yahoo! Smokey Eye" style that uses the brand’s signature purple color. In fact, it takes some digging into older posts, but there are contributions from mainstay name brands like Allure, Elle, GQ, The Cut and Vogue. The Beauty app uses good navigation dynamics to gather the main categories of content, how-tos, beauty stories, food, products, etc. The oversized tile structure works better on a tablet, where you can see more than one story at once, than on a smartphone. Pretty as it all may be, the phone version requires too much scrolling and lacks a snap-back feature. The sharing tools are passable, but the inclusion of Yahoo!-owned Tumblr and exclusion of Pinterest is overt proprietary nonsense that ignores a clear consumer preference for this category and demographic. Although there is nothing glaringly wrong about Yahoo! Beauty, there is also nothing especially distinct about it. Brown’s persistent presence is the only discernable feature, and there is no recognizable voice or point of view here.