Maxim Digital has extended an ad sales partnership with Fark.com, a funny news aggregation site popular among young men.
"Our relationship will help Maxim Digital broaden its appeal
to advertisers, at the same time allowing Fark.com to avoid having to hire a professional sales staff," joked Fark.com owner Drew Curtis.
Launched in 1999, Fark now draws as many as 1.5 million
daily page views. The site maintains a subscription service named Total Fark, which charges $5 a month for full access to all story submissions, while the majority of its revenue comes from brand
advertising.
Content partners like Fark are critical to Maxim's broader appeal to readers and advertisers, according to Steven Rosenblatt, vice president of sales for Maxim Digital.
"Coupling the Fark community's savvy nature with the core Maxim Digital audience creates a great opportunity for advertisers," Rosenblatt said.
Maxim Digital, which encompasses Maxim.com,
Blender.com and Stuffmagazine.com, reaches roughly 5 million unique visitors each month.
While many magazines have been slow to adopt aggressive digital strategies, Alpha Media Group's
Maxim was recently singled out for its impressive use of the Web by Washington, D.C. PR agency The Bivings Group.
In a recent Maxim Man Study conducted by research agency Hall & Partners,
most Maxim readers--48%--said sex was the best way to target men with advertising, while a respectable 35% said humor was the best way to get a message across.
Some 71% of men ages 18-34
reported spending more time online now than a year ago, according to the study.