Like Monkey, Jellyfish is a free weekly email which contains a variety of rich-media ad formats, including display ads with embedded content, advertorials, videos and sponsorships. Each issue targets 13- to 19-year-old girls with fashion, music and film news; aggregates content from web sites such as YouTube; and invites readers to send in clips.
Jellyfish is principally an offshoot of NatMag's Cosmo Girl magazine, and part of what NatMags managing director, Jessica Burley, describes as her "three-pronged approach".
"We have the Cosmo Girl magazine giving advice to girls and promoting self-development. We have Jellyfish, which collates the best of entertainment on the web, and finally, the Cosmogirl.co.uk web site, which offers a community and a place to meet. Put all three together and you have a powerful proposition," says Burley.
But the MD also admits that Jellyfish could help to bolster Cosmo Girl's flagging circulation. The print magazine posted a drop of 23 per cent year-on-year in the latest ABC figures. "The web site may increase Cosmo Girl's print sales as it will reach a much larger community and broaden awareness with a slightly older audience," she adds.
Celia Duncan, former editor of CosmoGirl is heading a 14-week Jellyfish test to try to gauge its popularity among female readers. It is emailed out to Cosmogirl.co.uk's database of subscribers.
Best of web
"Jellyfish aims to collate the 'best of the web' each week. We learned that teenagers are limited in the amount of time they can spend on the web, often due to parental supervision, so we've condensed everything into one. Now they can squeeze in more information in less time. It will be a very immediate medium. Fashion is a big part of it and featured clothes will all have a click-and-buy feature," says Burley.
"The e-mag format is great for inciting the viral effect. Our target group cares deeply about advice and opinions from friends so it's an extremely powerful thing when they can forward a page and say, 'hey, what do you think of this?'"
But opinion is divided as to what the arrival of yet another e-mag means for UK publishers and advertisers. While they offer the supposed benefits of lower costs, trackability and highly interactive content, the road to success is still long.
"It's not a bad idea, combining the interactive experience with magazine content. Monkey has been a success, so far, but it has a different concept to Jellyfish. What Dennis did worked because it followed consumer habits, it simply followed readers online. Jellyfish will work differently because it is focused on the new tech-savvy generation. To succeed, it will need to have a strong dialogue with its readers and offer lots of new features, such as music downloads," says Mark Creighton, managing director of i-level.
"E-mags must also tread carefully with their links to third-party content. Unilever temporarily pulled its ads from Monkey because it said its content was too risque. As an agency, we have to be very clear with the client about what they are prepared to accept being associated with and then monitor the site to ensure it stays within the client's boundaries. This is because e-mags link to external content that is constantly updated," he adds.
"Clients also need to remember that advertising in an e-mag is not a closed experience, every online ad is potentially viral. Should the interest in their ads continue to grow, they have a responsibility to respond to the dialogue - perhaps weeks or months after the advert originally went out. The promoters of X-men, for example, created a temporary web site to plug the film but, 18 months later, the site is still going."
What's more, the sizeable challenges of e-mags lie not only with advertisers. While Dennis and its software partner Applecart, creator of Ceros, the page display technology that powers both Monkey and Jellyfish, have lauded the instantaneous measurability of e-mags, the reality is not quite so black and white.
ABCe report
"Monkey could utilise its measurement tools better. We saw the ABCe report but would have liked more information. How many people actually go into the pages and read it? Just because they open it, that doesn't mean they read it. Do they return to the site? How many pages do they read and what sections? They need to enrich the ad package by offering all the data they have access to," says Rob Lynam, account director at mediaedge:CIA.
"We need more hard proof about who is reading Monkey. With the traditional ABC audit, you are aware that people pay a lot for the magazines so it's pretty much guaranteed that the publications will be read. I appreciate that Monkey has just launched and it's in its early stages and it takes time to get the model right. But the advantages of the online mag format for advertisers are huge and could be more fully exploited," he adds.
However, James Mallinson, publisher at Monkey, insists that clients should be reassured by the ABCe weekly audited figure of 209,000 and says that data forwarding issues are being addressed.
It is often presumed that web sites should be more transparent about their reader activities than traditional media. But the hybrid model of a magazine/web site requires a new approach, one that often involves a delicate balancing act between appeasing both readers and advertisers. Mallinson insists that, while he is taking steps to release more data to clients, Monkey must exert confidentiality rights to some extent.
"We are going to release more reader viewing data to agencies as we know that this is a real selling point. In response to media buyer requests, we're going to publish more real-time data for their usage, in broad terms," says Mallinson.
"But, while we're aware that the digital medium is expected to be transparent, we are not a web site, so we need to consider our readers and their beginning to end experience. Complete data transparency could lead to a skew in the ads in the magazine. But we can promise that we always put the advertisements in the most read parts of the e-mag, where possible. This, in conjunction with the low advertising versus editorial ratio (compared with Zoo and Nuts), plus the inherent benefits of the format, ensures clients will receive maximum stand-out," he adds.
Two-way readership
On a brighter note, as Mallinson points out, the potential benefits of the e-mag format are many. Compared with traditional press, e-mags can offer advertisers and readers access to truly engaging, two-way readership interaction, along with access to rich-media, video, user-generated content, clickable ads, games and message boards to help stimulate brand loyalty. As Burley of NatMags says: "Advertisements are just as important as the content on Jellyfish, it all adds up to the total interactive experience."
E-mags such as Jellyfish and Monkey can also offer 360 degs product views and a direct link to the product - major boons for advertisers that are impossible to replicate in print. These are opportunities that, if maximised, will ensure e-mags not only stay afloat, but also get the chance to thrive.
"People ask: 'Where does it fit?' Monkey's format is a typical example of the way that media is converging around us. Emotionally, we sell Monkey as a magazine. It has a flat-rate ad scale, for example. But using Ceros allows us to utilise brand new technology, with full video streaming, and 100 per cent user experience.
Like a magazine, Monkey has a definite beginning, middle and end," says St. John Betteridge, group advertising director at Dennis. "E-mags are a complementary media. They're unique for marketers because they offer the chance to showcase their adverts in real-time rich media, Unilever even got the chance to tell their Lynx story via video at Monkey."
But only time will tell whether Monkey will be a long-term success because, without doubt, a raft of copycat competitors will already be drawing up launch plans on the back of its success. Meanwhile, Jellyfish and Monkey will face similar challenges even though they boast markedly different target audiences. Over-full reader in-boxes and sceptical old-school print advertisers will remain a challenge for e-mags across the board.
MOST POPULAR MEN'S MAGAZINES ONLINE
Rank Title Unique Audience Publisher
Jan 07 (000s)
1 Maxim 479 Dennis
2 FHM 378 Emap
3 Monkey 347 Dennis
4 Zoo 198 Emap
5 Nuts 176 IPC
6 GQ 113 Conde Nast
7 Men's Health 81 NatMag Rodale
8 Loaded 80 IPC
9 Bizarre 78 Dennis
10 T3 73 Future
Source Nielsen/NetRatings, Uk NetView home & work data, Oct 06-Jan 07
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