Wired magazine is seeing its ad revenue closely align with the nature of its content. That is, digital now matters most.
According to a report published Thursday, digital contributed 50% of all ad revenue at Wired magazine in the last quarter of 2012. For the calendar year, digital ads represented 45% of total ad sales at Wired.
Although digital advertising has grown immensely in recent years, Wired is one of the biggest magnets for digital ad buying.
Digital advertising contributed to about 10% of Wired ad revenue in 2006, when parent company Condé Nast bought Wired.com and reunited it with the magazine, according to Howard Mittman, VP-publisher at Wired.
“We spent a lot of time debating whether we were the best magazine with a website or the best website with a magazine,” Mittman tells AdAge. “And at the end of the day, I don’t think we care. Hitting 50% is proof that there is a successful template inside of this industry that can be followed by others and that having a magazine doesn’t necessarily need to be an analog anchor around your technological neck.”
Incredibly, Mittman points out, 90% of Wired’s digital ad revenue still comes from the traditional web.
“The tablet is becoming a significant contributor to all this but, candidly, the bulk of this is coming from the website,” he says.