Larry Burstein, the publisher of New York Media, is a vital part of the team that’s made New York‘s Internet counterpart, NYMag.com, one of the earliest success stories for magazine brands transitioning online. By selling the site’s Ellie-winning content, he and his team have created a moneymaking venture currently employing 40 staffers. Below, he talks about why selling print and the Web is really the same thing, the difference between a Web presence and a Web business, and the Lohan pics.
So what do you do on a daily basis for the Web site and the magazine?
The thing I’d like to start with is that we do it for both. We’re selling the brand. We changed the name of the company to New York Media. When we were moving downtown, we were outfitting our reception area, we had this big giant New York logo with a tiny URL underneath and it suddenly didn’t feel right considering how robust the Web site is, and how terrific it is, and how quickly it’s growing and what an important part of our business it is. At the time that we moved down here we renamed the company New York Media because not only did we have the magazine, we had the Web site, we had our first book published, we did our first issue of Look. It was a different kind of company. We sell the brand.
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How much of your time is spent with advertisers for the Web vs. advertisers for print? Or does it all mix into one category?
People are responding to the brand. We talk to them about how much exposure they want on the Web site and how much exposure they want in the magazine, and we don’t really lead with one or the other. Everybody on staff is equipped to sell both. We have digital specialists within our group who can help some of the print-centric sellers, but everybody we add to the team now needs to be equipped to sell digital and print at the same time.
I had a call a few weeks ago where I thought this particular brand would be more suited to the Web than the magazine, and I began the call talking about the Web. I pointed out specific things like Video Look Book and some of the other fashion things that we were doing, and this advertiser said I was the first publisher to ask for an appointment and lead with the Web. Then we followed up with the magazine. We’ll probably get business from both.
One of the things that is interesting to me is watching magazines adapt to the digital age. So many of them are talking about having a Web presence and I think that what we have here is a Web business. There’s a big difference.
Can you talk about that difference? What makes New York different?
I think what makes New York different is the fact that New York is this incredibly great combination of feature journalism and searchable data. You can read about Elliot Spitzer and you can also find an Italian restaurant below Canal St. Those two things coming together make it a very viable Web site, along with the fact that the topic it covers is New York, so there’s something new to talk about every single day.
| Most of the advertisers on our site are very sophisticated when it comes to accountability and have specific metrics by which they measure our performance. |
What are some of the specific challenges of selling the Web site vs. selling the print magazine?
The real challenge is how the market is adapting. In some ways, New York is almost ahead of the market and there are people out there who are completely equipped to buy the Web and there are people out there who are still lagging. And then there are people who ask for integrated packages but then aren’t necessarily prepared to execute them. The actual, technical selling of the Web is pretty standard. It’s how much inventory do you have and how can you sell it. The real challenge is finding the advertisers who are ready to move, who understand the value of this medium. It’s the first time in my career that I’ve been selling a medium that’s immediately accountable for its performance.
I was at an ad panel about digital media a month ago and the panelists were discussing how it’s hard to spend a lot of money online because the campaigns are all bespoke. Do you see that at New York?
We have some advertisers who are incredibly sophisticated at this and they can tell you how much business is bouncing back to their site when people will click on their ad and then not take action but take action weeks later. I guess the answer is that most of the advertisers on our site are very sophisticated when it comes to accountability and have specific metrics by which they measure our performance, and the site works.
When advertisers come to you, do you say, “How are you going to be tracking this?” Or is that totally on their end?
We ask them because sometimes that will impact what we put in the RPF relative to what their goals are, whether we think a run-of-site plan will work for them or whether we think they should concentrate on a specific panel.
It’s not a great time for magazines. Ad pages are down, yet you had a 4 percent increase last year. A lot of your advertisers are skewed towards the luxury side of the spectrum. A lot of the magazines being launched now are luxury publications. Do you think New York‘s position in the luxury niche has helped with the ad pages?
There are two reasons that the ad pages are strong. One is the ability to attract luxury advertisers. Luxury goods have to do well in New York. Most of their business is done in New York. If there business is going to succeed, it’s going to succeed here, so it’s important to cover this market. That means fashion, liquor, travel, cars, jewelry and accessories, and right now, real estate. That’s a big part of our success.
The other part of our success is the diversity of the ad base. Most magazines have an endemic ad base. A travel magazine depends on travel advertising and then non-endemic business to round it out. The same with a fashion magazine. Fashion advertisers are the endemic advertisers. A magazine like New York has a diverse ad base. We carry all those luxury goods advertisers, but we also carry a lot of movie, theater, cultural, restaurant, local retail. There’s a big local component to what we do. It’s that mix that makes the magazine exciting.
This goes back to your original question of why the Web site works. It’s the diversity of the advertising and the diversity of the content of the magazine.
A lot of publications are struggling to make the transition online. Yet here, you have a staff of 40 working online. What comes first, the advertising or the content online? Should a magazine like Esquire for example pump money into the Web by hiring a staff of editors and then hope the advertising follows?
I think you have to think of what do the people who are engaged with this brand want to see online and then figure out how to build the traffic. Once the traffic comes, you begin to get the advertising.
So how do you do that?
I don’t think there’s one broad stroke. I think the success of New York‘s Web site has been many small decisions that have added up to a successful enterprise. Not only is every bit of content in the magazine up online, so is a lot of original content that we felt would advance the brand and we felt needed to live on a daily basis. You have the three blogs — Grub Street, Vulture, and The Cut — and the Daily Intelligencer.
I also think that, I don’t know whether I read this or made it up, that the Web is our friend. There’s nothing to be afraid of here. I think a lot of magazines are in a position where they look at the Web, and they don’t know what to do with this new medium that’s coming along. Here, it was very easy to see how the Web was going to be a key part of our business and ultimately help the New York brand grow.
When did you start realizing that?
I think about five years ago. The company has been owned by Bruce Wasserstein for about five years, and I think at that moment we realized that a investment in the Web site was going to pay off.
You mentioned Look earlier. You just launched the Events division. Are there other initiatives coming up?
We have some. We’re not ready to talk about them yet, but the big initiative now is the 40th anniversary. There will be three issues leading up to it and then there will be a big 40th anniversary issue coming up in the fall.
Any interview wouldn’t be complete without asking about the Lohan pictures. When you do something like that, you had to anticipate it would be a big traffic boost. On the ad side, do you do anything to prepare for that?
There’s a very important separation between church and state here, so I knew about those pictures maybe two or three days before they were going to go up. We knew that there would be advertisers who would like to be included, and we knew there were advertisers who we knew would not like to be included. We were able to maximize the opportunity.
The real opportunity for that event was to get people from those pictures to other parts of our Web site.
And did that happen?
Yeah, it did. It totally worked.
Three tips for succeeding online
1. It’s all about the brand
Because people are “responding to the brand,” Burstein says he has an easer time selling both print and digital advertising.
2. Diversity
Burstein cites New York’s broad range of advertisers for helping stave off the advertising recession.
3. Advertising dollars follow content
“I think you have to think of what do the people who are engaged with this brand want to see online and then figure out how to build the traffic,” Burstein says. “Once the traffic comes, you begin to get the advertising.”
Noah Davis is mediabistro.com’s associate editor and co-editor of FishbowlNY.
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