Can Time Inc.’s Maghound Concept Work?

Maghound president Dave Ventresca says the fulfillment companies are onboard.

By Kristina Joukhadar
Thursday, January 3, 2008

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Several stories have been written about Time Inc.’s upcoming Maghound of-fering, but no one has explained how it will work.

Will publishers be leery of working with Maghound?

“I hope not!” says Dave Ventresca, president of Maghound, which is spearheaded by Time Consumer Marketing.

While some publishers may be hesitant to join a program that might pirate some of their regular subscriptions, Ventresca says that in a live market test, the majority of consumers selected new brands, not the titles of their existing subscriptions. In the Maghound environment, we feel that more people will be reading more magazines longer than with the traditional subscription model.


What about the concept?

Maghound is not selling traditional subs, but rather, a membership in a service, says Ventresca. “We’re offering a better way to order and manage magazines that come into your house [single copy]. You get a set number of titles for a monthly fee with no term.

“You are charged month to month, and are not linked to just one brand. So in month one, you can get magazines A, B, C; in month 4, you can switch to magazines D and E.”


What are the practical concerns?

“We're pretty confident we can do this,” says Ventresca. Time Customer Service and CDS and Palm Coast /Kable—all the major fulfillment companies—have said they can work with this. We've painted it all in broad strokes and some operational definitions remain, but we have the fulfillment solution figured out.”

The current delivery system and consumer pricing levels will make it impossible to get issues out any faster than with a traditional subscription, Ventresca says. “You're still dealing with the same fulfillment calendars, the same printers, so it’s hard to shrink. And the database selection dates are done in advance.

“But it will be an improvement in the expectations of consumers, be-cause with the account screen online, they will know approximately when they will receive all of their issues.

“Each magazine's fulfillment calendar will be known,” he says, “so if the consumer selects the magazine in January, February, etc., we'll know when they send the order to the database. You need to build the fulfillment system to be scalable, reliable, cost effective, and we’re doing that.”

We have postal experts working on this and they know good delivery times. All copies will qualify for the periodicals rate, presorted with the regular run.

 
Will consumers buy their copies online?

Ventresca says the beauty of the Maghound system will be its ease of use for the consumer. “There is no term and full flexibility. Consumers will manage online in one screen. The switching is easy when there’s no term. They are charged a monthly fee, by credit card and Pay Pal.”

 
Will it meet audit requirements?

The Audit Bureau of Circulations reporting has been gone over multiple times, Ventresca says. “It's good circulation, paid for by real consumers with real dollars, and the orders are placed in a magazine centric environment. For the time being, at least, it will temporarily count toward single copy sales.

“When there's more volume in the future, it might evolve into its own classification on the ABC audit report. As far as the value to advertisers, it's great circulation. For a flat fee, you can choose from hundreds of magazines, which demonstrates ‘wantedness.’”

 
What data will publishers get?

The database will be separate and contain only the magazines and members in the program. Because of the nature of its financial relationship with its members’ services, and the fact that these are not subscribers, Maghound will own the customer data and will not be able to share it with other publishers (including Time Inc.) for promotional purposes. You can’t release the names, as members wouldn’t want their data shared.

 
How will the finances work?

There will be full reporting for publishers, issue by issue. “Publishers will receive a fixed dollar amount per issue sold per title with a certain amount for every copy. Since this circ will have positive payments, it could be used to replace less attractive or more expensive circ."