Exclusive: Complex Media Unveils New Website

Complex Media, which incorporates Complex magazine and Complex.com, is a top destination for twenty-something professional men. Last fall the company announced a few important hires. Recently, FishbowlNY sat down with CEO Rich Antoniello about his company moving forward in 2011. Very quickly into the meeting, FishbowlNY learned exclusive details of Complex Media’s relaunched website. Beginning on January 5, Complex.com will roll out the redesign of its website. “We want to get some feedback from consumers,” Antoniello told us. He says print readers are heavy users of the site. The numbers point that out. Complex.com has 30 million page views, and 2.5 million unique users. “We want to make sure that they’re happy with the product that we put out, so there’s going to be a lot of testing,” Antoniello says. Once the testing is complete, Complex becomes a more tightly organized stop for those coveted influential males. The new site will offer seven “silos” or headings---Style, Sneaker, Art, Music, Entertainment, Gaming, Sports/Auto. “What we’re doing is redesigning it so the network itself, the channels and silos of the network…will each have its own channel on complex.com,” Antoniello explains. “We will literally and figuratively be the hub of the network now.” That network that Antoniello refers to is their ad network comprising 50 sites. Antoniello calls the new look a “mini Huffington Post,” with one major exception. “We’re not going to aggregate content from outside of our network.” He says the focus is on enhancing the consumers’ experience while visiting the site. “We feel like we have the higher quality sites. We have exclusive relationships with those sites,” Antoniello says. “So what we want to do is deepen that conversation so that it crosses across every single site in the network and uses Complex.com as the conduit to get to the others.” He says using the Complex brand name, “which is like the ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval’ for cool young men,” can attract the best websites within the drilled down topics. “We’ve been a leader in creating very interesting customized programs online….We’ve stood apart from other people and the online network has just blown up on us,” Antoniello says. In October, Complex hired Orlando Lima as managing editor for both the online and magazine platforms. Lima most recently worked for Vibe, as editor-at-large. Ronen Shapiro was brought in as director of spirits and automotive for the Northeast. He comes to Complex from Conde´ Nast.

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Exclusive: Complex Media Unveils New Website

Jerry Barmash

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