• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, December 12, 2006

As part of a major realignment, Rodale is unifying its print and online sales teams, the publishing company announced Monday.

In addition, each of the company's nine major magazines will get its own online ad sales director, and will significantly boost its online sales personnel. On the editorial side, the company intends to beef up online content at key properties, including flagship title Men's Health magazine.

With the changes, the company hopes to make it easier for advertisers to reach print and online readers with a single media buy, said Executive Vice President and Group Publisher MaryAnn Bekkedahl, who will lead the new unified sales force. "For marketers," she said, the new structure will offer "an integrated approach to our customers."

Bekkedahl added that an advertiser that wants to reach a particular type of reader--say, a bicycler--will no longer have to deal with separate print and online media ad schedules for the company's magazine and print properties.

Rodale also intends to build out its magazines' Web sites, adding video, blogs and other original content. In the last year, the Men's Health Web site has already started rolling out these features, but intends to significantly amp up its efforts.

"We're literally going to be adding video to every area of the site," said Men's Health Editor in Chief David Zinczenko. "We'll do fashion video, nutrition video, fitness video," he said. "We'll bring stories in the magazine to life."

MensHealth.com also intends to add blogs in all of the magazine's core areas within a year. While a handful of editors currently blog for the site, Zinczenko said he expects that all of the magazine's major section editors will soon be blogging.

Overall, he anticipates that the site will add 20 blogs over the next year, as well as one or two new video clips each week.

The three largest titles--Men's Health, Runner's World, and Prevention--also will immediately start hiring online sales staff, Bekkedahl said. The other six major titles--Women's Health, Best Life, Bicycling, Backpacker, Mountain Bike, and Organic Gardening--will expand their online sales teams over the next year.

The company intends to also maintain its regional multi-site online sales team, which currently sells inventory across different Rodale titles. That unit will now report to Bekkedahl.