U.S. News' College Report Online Revenues in Seven Figures
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
So says U.S. News & World Report president Bill Holiber, talking about the relaunch of its America's Best Colleges online portal, in an interview with Folio. Its flagship franchise list saw about 15 million page views in the last one week, and online revenue around the story is up 500 percent. "We're well into seven figures just online for this story," he said. The publisher has sold major online ad packages on the site to Dell and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Office Student. Meanwhile, the print edition of the mag is still bleeding: ad pages fell 30.2 percent and estimated ad revenue drop 26.1 percent, according to Publishers Information Bureau figures. It is dropping its weekly frequency to a bi-weekly by next year, and recently formed a new U.S. News Media Group, in an effort to develop more franchises beyond the weekly under it.
If I were them, I would dump everything else, and focus on the online development of its college guide franchise: buys some talent, buy some smaller sites, develop the community, and run with it
By Rafat Ali