With BDG leading its sales, W Magazine doubled first quarter digital revenue over 2020

By Kayleigh Barber

Just over a year ago in March, W Magazine was in “survival mode,” according to Marc Lotenberg, the chief executive of the fashion magazine’s then owner Future Media Group. At the time, 17 out of its 58 employees were furloughed and the company was actively seeking a buyer.

A new owner came in the form of Karlie Kloss and a group of investors, including CEO of BDG Bryan Goldberg, who bought the magazine for an undisclosed amount and formed W Media in August 2020. Since then, BDG (formerly Bustle Digital Group) has served as the magazine’s operational partner, leading the sales strategy and technology improvements for the magazine. W, on the other hand, served as BDG’s entrance into the luxury space and working with a variety of new advertisers.

And so far, it seems that having access to BDG’s sales team is paying off for W. In the first quarter of the year, revenues for the digital product were up 199% over the same quarter in 2020, according to BDG president and CRO Jason Wagenheim. This was 25% over the quarter’s revenue goal, according to the company. The combined print and digital businesses are projected to be up 10% in the first half of the year, Wagenheim added. He did not give exact figures.

This growth in large part us due to the access to BDG’s branded content studio, which is a new offering for the fashion magazine, according to Amber Estabrook, publisher of W Media and svp of BDG. Some of W’s luxury advertisers, like Celine and Bottega Veneta, bought their first-ever branded content campaigns using BDG’s card story format, a CMS feature that allows for different types of storytelling by incorporating images and videos in a visually captivating way. Branded content represents a mid-to-high six figures of revenue for W from the beginning of the year to April, according to BDG.

Megan Jones, vp of marketing and partner at advertising agency January Digital, works with beauty and fashion clients including DKNY and Rebecca Taylor. She credited the success of the partnership between W and BDG to the spending return from fashion and luxury brands that were restarting marketing campaigns at the end of last year, but were still struggling to physically create their own assets under Covid restrictions. And the addition of branded content provided a great advantage when the fashion magazine was trying to win business, in addition to BDG’s additional scale with the rest of its BDG portfolio, which includes Bustle, Nylon and The Zoe Report.

“In a way, [Covid] created more opportunity for publishers to capture dollars from luxury brands as the pandemic forced luxury brands to let go of the idea of total brand control and put their brand into the hands of real people and real publishers that they trust,” said Jones.

This is also the first time that BDG has access to a print product — W publishes its magazine six …read more

Source:: Digiday