• The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, April 1, 2008 10:45 AM

Increasingly, publishers are scooping up technology firms to help them craft marketing services for advertisers--and we're not talking about Yahoo, MSN and AOL getting into the ad network business (although they started the trend). Magazine publishers like Condé Nast and Meredith are using technologies they've acquired recently to design promotions that would help marketers sell ad space.<

For example, Condé Nast is preparing a promotion for the retailer Dillard's that lets visitors to the Dillard's site vote on merchandise that will be used later in ads. The promotion leverages the technology of the magazine publisher's recently acquired social voting site, Reddit. It allows visitors to the Dillard's site to rank products featured in a top 10 list selected by Condé Nast's Lucy magazine and Style.com publications.

Meredith is also making advances into the digital advertising world. The publisher of Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle has purchased three digital agencies in the past two years. Rival publisher Hearst, whose titles include Cosmo and Good Housekeeping, has made similar acquisitions, including social-shopping site Kaboodle.

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