Magazine Media 2.0BBC Magazines

Rebecca ConroyNew Media Director

About BBC Magazines

• Division of BBC Worldwide Ltd - a wholly owned subsidiary of the BBC. Our other businesses include TV channels e.g. BBC America, TV Sales, Programme licensing e.g. Dancing with the Stars, DVDs and Books

• BBC Magazines is the third largest consumer magazines publisher in the UK

• Over 40 magazines in the UK

• Also licence some of our magazines internationally e.g. Top Gear in 15 countries

BBC Magazines: Digital Business

Key objectives:

1) To extend our key brands with websites that are profitable in their own right

2) For smaller magazines, use the web to promote and increase subscriptions to the paper product

TopGear.com RadioTimes.com bbcgoodfood.com

Digital Business: Key Facts

• Main focus on web – limited activity on mobile

• Three large p&l sites with at least three more due to launch this year

• Smaller marketing sites for all our other magazines

• Over 3.3 million unique users every month

• Over 40 million page impressions each month

• 8% of revenues currently from digital advertising

Developing a site: process

Launching a website like Topgear.com follows a 7-stage process; it can take 4-7 months and involves a number of different parts of the business

1. Scoping2. Wire frame

3. Design – phase 1

4. User-testing

5. Design – phase 2

6. Coding 7. Testing

• Develop site proposition

• Detailed word docs showing every element of each page

• Design begins based on the wireframes

• User testing of key design journeys

• Respond to results of user testing and complete remaining designs

• Designs delivered and are now coded

• Content is added

• Completed pages are tested

Total development cost: approx 600k euros, excluding marketing

Top Gear.com

Two

Developing a site: people

People:

• Central web team provide:• Editorial – specific web expertise • Technical – developers and project managers• Commercial – ad research and ad sales

• Individual Magazine Brand teams:• Editorial – brand and subject expertise e.g. Motoring, Food• Marketing – run the marketing campaigns

• Outsourced:• Design • Usability research• Marketing planning and buying

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Organisational Structure: principles

1. Publisher of the magazine to be publisher of the brand across print and digital – they hold the P&L and the strategy

2. Editor of the magazine to become editor-in-chief across print and digital. Web editorial team reports into them

3. Advertising sold in-house, rather than through an external agency. Sold by new media specialists, but increasing demand for print teams to learn how to cross-sell

4. Brand marketing teams have print skills – they need to learn about digital marketing. Bring in a digital marketing specialist to lead this and to help teach them

5. Central web specialist team to lead development of key projects and ensure synergies across our sites

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Key Challenges

1. Making decent profits from a single revenue stream – advertising

2. Increase in competitors – not just the publishing world competitive set

3. Integration (or not?) of online and offline teams

4. Development of video – how do we become experts in this?

5. ‘Professional’ journalism vs. user generated

6. How far is the website an extension or a continuation of the brand?

7. Increase emphasis on analysis – so much data but what to interpret?

8. A common measurement system