Cook’s Illustrated’s Online Video Library Enhances Successful Paid Membership Model

Cook’s Illustrated’s video series “Cook’s Live” stands out from the pack with its ad-free environment and paid subscription model.

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Wednesday, May 21, 2008

While various food and cooking magazines have long benefited from the success of offering recipes online, a select few have taken it step further by bringing its recipes to life with online videos.

Cook’s Illustrated’s video series “Cook’s Live” stands out from the pack with its ad-free environment and paid subscription model—and it hasn’t been anything but successful.

“Cook’s Illustrated is the Brittanica-esque series of [food] magazines,” says Craig Morrow, VP, new technology, America’s Test Kitchen. “It’s reference material for our readers. So our goal was to bring the magazine to life and show our readers the tips and techniques they need, but in a way that really complements the magazine.”

Cook’s Live, which shows test cooks preparing recipes straight from the magazine, launched on CooksIllustrated.com in April 2007 with a series of free videos that users could download using Mirror Image’s content delivery network. But for access to the entire video library, users are prompted to subscribe to paid membership that also includes 15- year’s worth of CI recipes and product listings.

So far, the numbers show that readers value video in their premium Web content—currently, there are over 230,000 paid Web members, and since there launch, there have been 3.8 million downloads and 616,000 average views per month. And according to Morrow, about 40 percent of Web members subscribe to the magazine.

"The Web videos are an add-on service that we think compliments our offering nicely because of how well they are done and how they line up with our current model," says Morrow.

“From our testing, we found that a lot of people are watching [these videos] and are completing the videos. And from an advertising point of view, that’s liquid gold. And when you have the type of volume and the number of people paying for your content, it becomes our job to continually add value to that content.”

Morrow says that Cook’s Illustrated has what he calls a “long tail,” which is why people are willing to pay for access to Web content. “With 15 years worth of recipes and techniques, the ability for a user to search through them with just the touch of a button is a huge value proposition,” he says. “You just don’t want to have to thumb through all of your magazines at home.”

What also makes Cook’s Live unique from other online videos series is the manner in which users access it. America’s Test Kitchen uses Mirror Image’s Streaming Media solution, which delivers the videos using a network of servers that are placed all over the world.

“Our technology is different,” says Martin Hayward, director of marketing, Mirror Image. “If a user in Seattle wants to watch a video on a site that doesn’t have a global network, the performance wouldn’t be as good because it would take so long for his server to receive the message. We have technology that identifies where the request is coming from. We’ll then serve the video from a server in Seattle. It makes the experience more pleasurable because there’s no delay or server crashes.”

Mirror Image also provides the tools its clients need to track, maintain, upload and delete content. Clients are able to track the number of viewers that are watching the videos, as well as where they are from. Besides America’s Test Kitchen, Mirror Image’s other clients include The New York Times and the Home Shopping Network.

“Our partnership [with Mirror Image] is a win-win situation,” says Morrow. “It’s a success anytime you can partner up someone that keeps you focused on the ideas rather than on the technology.”