IDG Launches Proprietary CMS Across Network
Viewability, video, asset management are areas of emphasis.
BY MICHEAL RONDON
IDG Launches Proprietary CMS Across Network
Viewability, video, asset management are areas of emphasis.
BY MICHEAL RONDON
IDG Launches Proprietary CMS Across Network
Viewability, video, asset management are areas of emphasis.
BY MICHEAL RONDON
Playboy Returns to Its Archive, Launches Playmates.com
New site is a non-nude interactive chronicle of 60 years’ worth of Playmates.
BY CAYSEY WELTON
Playboy is celebrating its 60th birthday this year. So far the celebration has already included a robust anniversary issue that kicked off 2014 and a rerelease of its inaugural issue. Now, the magazine has launched Playmates.com, an interactive website dedicated to the history of the brand’s iconic Playmates.
Playmates.com will be a slightly safer landing page for visitors in that it will not reveal nudity. That said, visitors still have plenty of eye candy to explore. Plus, the site is fully interactive and mobile responsive, so it encourages discovery and click-through from any device.
From a business perspective, the new site is a solid marketing play. It’s optimized for social sharing and it has clear entry points for visitors to either subscribe to the magazine or iPlayboy. Also worth noting is that aside from house ads, there is no other advertising on the site. The company says, “we have no immediate monetization plans but we do believe that there will be a large and attractive enough audience to provide for advertising and e-commerce opportunities in the future.”
In terms of content, the site has introduced a few new features. Visitors that wish to know more about the Playmates can engage with “15 Seconds,” a feature similar to the “Playmate Data Sheet” that accompanies each centerfold. The “Playmate Redux” will provide readers with a “where are they now?” perspective on some of the most popular Playmates from the past 60 years. There is also has a weekly video blog, which will discuss a host of lifestyle topics including dating and relationship advice. 
IDG Communications is overhauling its back-end infrastructure with the launch of a new proprietary content management system it’s calling Apollo.
The CMS will offer editors a range of tools for multimedia storytelling and simplify access to the company’s extensive trove of content. That latter feature could be big for IDG—the company has more than 2,000 journalists, 460 sites, 200 apps and 180 print titles in its media network.
“We believe that our CMS is a critical core component to our digital strategy,” says Michael Friedenberg, CEO of IDG Communications Worldwide. “Having a modernized CMS will enable us to move and engage with our reader at a much deeper level allowing for greater flexibility, productivity, and innovation.”
Display ad viewability was also an area of emphasis for the company, says Gregg Pinsky, the company’s SVP and GM of digital services.
“In the deconstructed right rail design ads and promotion modules are spaced more widely apart and indent slightly into the body of the article to counteract banner blindness typical on traditional two column article pages,” he says. “The template lazy loads the ads, and as long as the user is scrolling the content, we continue to load additional ads at specific intervals. This not only achieves a higher viewability and engagement rate but also results in reduced page load time for a better user experience.”
Friedenberg notes the need to adapt to an environment that’s increasingly focused on video. The company currently delivers 100 million video streams per month, generating about 7 percent of its revenue come from video, with 50 percent year-over-year growth, he says.
Vox’s Chorus, Say Media’s Tempest and Forbes’s Falcon are a few systems that have garnered attention as cutting-edge content creation tools.
Say Media and Forbes have been pursuing licensing deals that could turn their CMSs into standalone revenue streams, but IDG says it’s not looking into similar opportunities right now.