Thursday, August 9, 2012

The Reason Women's Magazines Are Missing Millennials Online? No News

AdAge reporting:
When Katie Holmes blindsided Tom Cruise with divorce papers at the end of June, jaws dropped and young women scurried to get the details on the news as quickly as possible.
For most young women, that meant turning to their digital devices to instantly find out what was going on and why.
But what most young women ages 18-34 -- the millennial generation -- didn't do was turn to any of the traditional women's sites, such as Glamour.com, Cosmopolitan.com, MarieClaire.com, Elle.com, etc.
Even though young women's magazines had owned the hearts and minds of their audiences on the newsstand for decades, anticipating and responding to their every need, they have not established themselves as daily indispensable online destinations for their readers.
The question is why?
Their female audience is certainly at home on the web. Seventy-five percent of millennial women use the internet weekly for news or information (vs 49% who report reading a magazine weekly) and 62% own smartphones (up from 41% last year). Thirty percent own tablets (a huge increase from 8% last year).
Yet so far, most traditional young women's publishers appear to think they're answering the digital needs of their audience simply by making their magazines available for sale by subscription on the iPad every month.
As someone who spent 25 years as the editor-in-chief of several major young women's magazines and then spent the past three leading HollywoodLife.com, an online site targeting young, female millennials, I think I have the answer.
Traditional magazine brands are too often missing the key point of the internet's allure for their readers: immediacy. They are in no way set up to respond to this audience's all-important need to know, now.
Let me explain. As the editor of HollywoodLife.com, I learned very quickly that what fuels traffic to our site every day, all day, is news. Young women want to know all the very latest on celebrities, fashion, beauty, parenting information, diets, TV, film and all forms of entertainment.
http://adage.com/article/media/traditional-women-s-missing-entire-generation-readers/236559/?utm_source=Daily+Buzz+from+eMedia+Vitals&utm_campaign=46cd410cfb-_nb_DB_08-09-2012&utm_medium=email

No comments:

Post a Comment