Brandweek Shuttering?

By Matt Van Hoven 

MediaPost’s MediaDailyNews ran a rumor last week that Nielsen Media is thinking of merging Brandweek with Adweek or Mediaweek. Late last year the Adweek Media Group reorganized the three publications, laying off a number of editorial staff. So if one thing is certain, a reorganized Brandweek wouldn’t be surprising.

Here’s the part where we mention that surviving in this climate is all about your ability to sell ads, which is linked to your traffic/readership. Oh and it’s a good idea to keep costs down, too.

Advertisement

Increasingly, Adweek and Brandweek have been sharing cover stories. Well, homepage content anyway. This speaks to two matters: first, sharing means there’s space that needs to be filled. Second, the sites are similar enough that sharing content is allowable. So on the one hand we have to ask, why have two entities? It’s a question that we’re hoping Brandweek will answer for us.

We’re somewhat frustrated by the Adweek Media Group site design because there’s an exceedingly large quantity of white space and very little of their content pops out. Now, AgencySpy won’t be winning any design awards this millennium, but you if nothing else it’s easy to navigate the day’s news. The sites feel over designed, and what’s worse, the mistake is repeated across the board.

This isn’t to say the content they provide is not relevant. To be, each medium is read widely.

So if Brandweek were to fold into its brethren, we can only imagine it would come as a result of advertising not supporting the bottom line. That’s the inherent issue these days, and few publications (or media companies) have been able to avoid the issue. Let us be the first to say we hope this “news” doesn’t leave the world of rumor.

More:
BrandWeek’s Top Marketers of the Year…and You’re Not One of Them

Advertisement