PRIMEDIA To Trade Ad Space for Equity
PRIMEDIA, the publishing company that owns Seventeen , New York and American Baby magazines, said it plans to use its advertising inventory to takestakes in start-up Internet companies.
PRIMEDIA, the publishing company that owns Seventeen, New York, and American Baby magazines, said it plans to use its advertising inventory to take stakes in start-up Internet companies.
The company is taking a cue from CBS, which has bartered promotion for pieces of new companies, including Marketwatch, Medscape and Office.com. PRIMEDIA says it has 33,000 pages of advertising inventory to draw on.
“PRIMEDIA has excellent multimedia opportunities to expand its consumer and business-to-business brands,” says Rogers.
“In order to take full advantage of these opportunities, including attracting new media talent as well as funding the growth of this area from sources that are in addition to PRIMEDIA’s own cash flow, we will be pursuing venture structures that maximize value for shareholders and enable alternatives for raising capital.”
The company already operates a few consumer Internet properties, including Apartmentguide.com, Seventeen.com, Equisearch.com, Modernbride.com and Americanbaby.com.
PRIMEDIA’s business-to-business unit includes Digibid.com, Internettelephony.com and MediaCentral.com.
