Dive Brief:
- Readers are moving online and marketers are demanding ad price concessions, a reality implicitly rubber stamped by Condé Nast.
- The company now negotiates pricing for online ads rather than dictating what marketers will pay.
- While some industry insiders say Condé Nast is behind the curve on the trend, it marks a step forward in the reconcilation between traditional and new media landscapes.
Dive Insight:
Condé Nast changed a policy of not negotiating ad buys in light of competition in online advertising.
Barry Lowenthal, president of The Media Kitchen, told Digiday, “Condé Nast is off the rate card. They’re willing to negotiate. I was having lunch with a Condé Nast publisher, and one of the first things he said was, ‘If price is an issue, we can talk about that.’ You never would have talked about that in the past.”
The publishing behemoth also recently launched its in-house native advertising unit, 23 Stories, and the first output from the shop was a four-page cover unit of sponsored content in the print edition of Bon Appétit. The ad was the first time the magazine featured a sponsored cover and did not go over well with subscribers.