Time looks beyond ad revenue, buying personal shopping site StyleFeeder for InStyle.com

Time looks beyond ad revenue with StyleFeeder

NEW YORK — Time Inc. is looking beyond advertising revenue to help bolster InStyle magazine’s online edition, saying Tuesday it will acquire the personal shopping Web site StyleFeeder.

While online versions of newspapers and magazines have seen ad revenue climb over the past decade, that growth has not kept pace with steep declines in print revenue.

StyleFeeder, which Time plans to integrate with InStyle.com, combines advertising with a slice of the profits earned when shoppers make retail purchases online.

Time did not disclose the purchase price but said the site has more than 1 million registered users.

Fran Hauser, the president of digital operations for Time’s Style & Entertainment Group, said StyleFeeder has already negotiated revenue-sharing terms with more than 2,000 online retailers, though she declined to give specifics.

“Shopping is a natural extension of what women do on InStyle.com,” she said. “E-commerce allows us to diversify.”

Finding new ways to drive revenue — through advertising or otherwise — is a top priority for the industry. Magazines lost more than a quarter of their ad pages in 2009 compared with the year before, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

InStyle, for instance, is also looking to more closely integrate its print edition with online shopping as a way to bring more advertisers back to print. In its December issue, the magazine introduced special 3-D pages that direct readers to retailer sites.