The Digital Briefing hosted by Condé Nast Digital Britain announced:
• Ongoing investment in talent, technology and audience understanding
• Advanced levels of adoption for new technologies amongst the Condé Nast readership
• Sales approaching 200,000 of Condé Nast digital editions in the past year
• New iterations of successful sites ongoing for continued excellence
• Ambitious plans for mobile optimisation
• A growing social media footprint, with more than 965,000 facebook fans and almost as many following Condé Nast brands on twitter
Nicholas Coleridge (pictured), Managing Director of Condé Nast Britain and President Condé Nast International remarked “In today’s fast-moving, ever evolving world, the fusion of talent and technology is more potent and powerful than ever before. These are exciting times, where the impossible is suddenly possible, and where brands such as ours are no longer just wonderful in print, but can now amaze, inspire and inform on multiple platforms.”
All 13 magazines published by the British company are now available digitally. With nearly 200,000 digital editions of our magazines sold in the past year, Condé Nast replica editions are also award-winning. GQ and Wired have both been internationally acclaimed by iMonitor, arguably the world’s leading app review monitor. And in December last year Condé Nast won three prizes at the Digital Magazine of the Year Awards - Editor of the Year for David Rowan, Best Technology and Gadget Magazine for Wired, and Vogue won Digital Fashion Magazine of the Year. Vogue has now produced 3 editions on the iPad and will go monthly from September 2012. And Condé Nast also has 13 successful iPhone apps available, with more soon to follow.
Condé Nast prioritise audience understanding, rigorously tracking take up of new technologies with reader panels. Adoption of the iPad amongst out audience is up from an 8% average in 2010 to 28% ownership at the end of 2011. Brands like Wired, GQ, and Vanity Fair, illustrate even more marked levels of adoption (served by their monthly editions on Adobe DPS for the iPad). Now 50% of Wired’s audience and 42% of GQ’s regular readers own an iPad – way above the national average. Ownership of the iPad is well ahead of the curve for all our magazine readers and website users.
Smart phone usership among regular readers is also way ahead of the average British consumer. Pre-Xmas 2011 around 90% of the Condé Nast audience had a smart phone – of which more than half were iPhones. Now, the figure is higher again.
Condé Nast was at the vanguard of publishing online, arriving in the digital space in the UK over 16 years ago, and the websites now have more than 3 million unique users across the 11 magazine-brand sites, together with Johansens, delivering 584 million page impressions. Our traffic numbers have grown exponentially in the past year; page impressions are up 57% and unique users have increased 63% year on year.
• Vogue.com now delivers more than 1 million uniques a month, (up 40% on 2010) and pushed through 270m page impressions in 2011. This weekend the site recorded its highest ever traffic figure – more than 2 million.
• Glamour’s page impressions reached record high in 2011 – up to 192m, +123% on the previous year. Uniques up 68% and visits +73%
• GQ page impressions, uniques and visits all up 50% on average
• Wired uniques up to a record 713k
• Traveller ever evolving and reaping the rewards – unique users are up 64%
• Brides, a relatively new site, is reporting traffic figures up a third year on year.
• A brand new Easy Living site has just launched simultaneously with the re-designed magazine.
• Vanity Fair is building its UK audience daily, currently delivering more than 760k page impressions.
• And coming soon a new site for Tatler, while House & Garden share their insight and authority blogging, and the Love site showcases the vision of Katie Grand.
Mobile optimisation is an ongoing focus for Condé Nast Digital. Jamie Jouning, Digital Director of Condé Nast, commented “For some of our sites over 10% of traffic is already coming via a mobile device and this percentage is only likely to grow. The first iteration of a fully optimized Vogue.com mobile site is now live. A simple construct, with intuitive navigation and content laid out in a clean linear fashion. Traffic via mobile spiked very quickly, a clear sign that our users like what they see and are returning for their fashion fix on a more regular basis. We are investing heavily in this area and aim to roll out fully optimized sites for Wired, Glamour and GQ over the next 5 months, taking what we’ve learnt to impart on the second iteration of the Vogue.com mobile site. Our ambition is to have a mobile portfolio that validates the strength of our brands whilst sticking firmly to our core aesthetic principles – no corners will be taken with quality or design.”
Commercially, Condé Nast Digital is committed to move industry opportunities on. “The advertising piece is just as important and we want to consign to the history books the barely sufficient mobile banner ad at the top and bottom of a page. Instead we want to offer expandable and full screen interstitial ads housing video and beautiful photo galleries to showcase client creativity in the way that it deserves. We know that mobile is going to be big, very big – if it isn’t already – and we are making a concerted effort to put our brands at the forefront of this technology,” Jouning adds.
Since 2010 Condé Nast has invested in more digital staff (more than 90 people now working in the digital part of the business, a third more than 14 months ago.) There has also been an investment in training staff across the business to maximise their understanding of digital media and its relevance, as the Condé Nast ‘digital university’ training sessions were rolled out to all. There is even greater collaboration across print and digital. And Condé Nast also continues to invest in new technology, looking to expand onto new platforms such as the Kindle Fire, as well as exploring the Galaxy tablet and other android platforms.
Other highlights of the Condé Nast Digital Briefing at the Royal Institution in central London included Scott Dadich, Vice President Digital Managing Development, Condé Nast US, in conversation with Albert Read, Deputy Managing Director of Condé Nast Britain. And Liz Landy, Managing Director IPSOS Media CT presented the findings of a cross-platform user study commissioned by Condé Nast.
