Company’s digital ad revenue up 70% from last year
Transcontinental Media has struck an exclusive Canadian sales representation deal with About.com and its sister sites CalorieCount.com and NetPlaces.com. The deal is effective Sept. 1.
Owned by The New York Times Company, the About.com network boasts a combined audience of about 5.8 million monthly unique visitors in Canada. The sites will boost total traffic on Transcontinental’s digital network to 11.3 million unique visitors a month – triple the amount it had less than a year ago.
Dominique-Sébastien Forest, vice-president of national digital solutions for Transcontinental, said that ad revenues for the Montreal-based company’s digital network are up around 70% over the past year.
While Transcontinental was formerly content to sell banner ads across its stable of web properties, Forest said the company radically changed its approach to online sales last year – expanding its offering to include “much more complex” opportunities such as dedicated microsites, contests and mobile strategies.
The About.com product is comprised of 24 vertical channels offering expert advice on more than 900 topics ranging from home repair to yoga.
“[It] is perfect in terms of allowing us to not only sell banner ads on the network, but allowing us to be able to execute programs in a large number of verticals, with the experts being able to produce specific content for the advertisers for great integration opportunities,” said Forest. “They always have the ability to create content for our partners and environments where we can include what advertisers or the agency want us to do.”
Transcontinental has been actively securing online representation deals over the past nine months, having brokered other deals with online networks including Ziff Davis (whose primary properties are PCMag.com and Geek.com), Demand Media (eHow.com, Cracked.com) and PopSugar.
Forest said that traditional media companies are actively seeking out online representation deals because it is difficult to achieve significant growth from existing web products, and can take upwards of two years to conceive, build and attract traffic – and subsequently revenue – to a new online entity.
Existing networks, he said, are an attractive shortcut to media companies because they offer an enticing combination of brand recognition and an established audience.
“We know that the acceleration and diversification of revenues associated with building new products is based on a longer time frame,” said Forest. “This type of partnership allows us to build reach extremely quickly, generate new revenues and accelerate the revenue strategy.”
