One of the most exciting things about Consumertronics Media, the new San Francisco-based media company, is the advertising opportunities it plans to provide.
The company will offer special
sponsorships that merge online and offline advertising in a new way.
Its website won't have banner ads, but special micro sites and online events that are cross promoted in its magazine. "You
might not be able to get into the sites without a copy of the magazine with a special code to get in," says Fred Davis, the company's founder and chairman. The microsites won't just be used to
describe products, but to actually sell them. "We'll move beyond ads whose goal is to capture attention," Davis says. "We'll create a format to help you go in and buy products, tieing advertising into
marketing and transactions, a complete cycle for advertisers."
Roger Black, a renowned magazine designer, will design both the magazine and the microsites, Davis says.
DiG iT (which
melds the hip expression and the word digit) is the name of the magazine, the company's first property, which will launch seasonally this spring before becoming a monthly. Davis, who has a background
at Ziff-Davis and Wired, is actually modeling the magazine after Maxim, the successful men's magazine. DiG iT will be a celebrity digital lifestyle magazine, showing celebrities using the latest
digital products.
It's a relatively new magazine concept. "Wired tried to go there, but its growth was limited by its exclusive positioning," Davis says. "We want an inclusive positioning,"
making the content more accessible to average readers, he says. Like Maxim, it will be "hip, with a fun sense to it."
The magazine will appeal to digital product marketers, whose ad budgets
remain high, while computer companies are suffering, he says.
The magazine is the first property in a multi media venture for a company that will have consumer and business divisions. The
consumer division includes the magazine, the website, a TV channel and Expo events for lifestyle products. The TV channel, still being planned, will be a 24-hour cable channel for interactive
shopping, Davis says, without being more specific. It will debut this fall.
The business side features a variety of Prosumer products, including a daily online newsletter and website covering
the convergence industry, which includes consumer electronics, computing, communication and entertainment. The business division will also feature a Prosumer conference, labs that will test products
and issue reports, and market research reports on the products and consumer use of them.
The company will be devoted to reporting on and marketing the digital lifestyle. Behind the company are
Davis and many other top media professionals. There are offices in San Francisco and Berkeley, CA. A financing announcement will be made on Feb. 1, Davis says.
"I'd been thinking about it for
years," he says. "Wired and CNET" (which Davis helped start) "should have been part of a big media company," he says, and now Consumertronics will fill the role. "Print, online, events, TV, market
research. Make it a content and marketing ecosystem where we create an info rich meta market and bring buyers and sellers together to do business and learn about each other."