Condé Nast has 26 international reports from Vogue. And what emerged in late 2020, as the coronavirus crisis continues with its catastrophes, is that the global audience of the fashion brand named Vogue – and which has been put to good use.
In fact, that audience behavior began at different times as each country felt the effects of the pandemic and later entered a lockout. But because of that, Sarah Marshall, who has been leading audience development for the international editions of Vogue for the next three years, said her team was able to see patterns and know what to expect from the daily habits of readers. That in turn allowed her team to engage in these practices and reach a reading stage.
Condé Nast runs 11 Vogue titles with ownership and operation, covering the editions in the US, France, Japan and Italy. In addition, there are three issues published by the company with the support of other corporate bodies and 15 international editions which are licensed to other publishers.
Traffic to the 11 endemic Vogue sites is up 40% year-over-year from November 2019 to November 2020, according to Marshall, reaching a peak of 58 million unique visitors a month. went. By itself, the U.S. title gathered 16 million unique visitors that month.
One of the biggest changes in audience behavior is that Marshall said she first discovered the two-week decline in evening readership for all Vogue sites.
“At the end of 2019, we found that for all Vogue [site globally], they had huge traffic in the evening for both a loyal audience [those who visit the same Vogue site four or more times per month] and flying listeners, ”said Marshall, peaking at 10pm local time.
But in the 12th and 13th weeks of the year (weeks 16 March and 23), there was a huge drop in people coming to Vogue sites, probably as a result of people being called to news outlets for updates on the coronavirus crisis. .
“We had Italy, Spain and France in bad locks, and before the UK and the US joined, we knew we could expect these behaviors. Weeks later, we also had a much bigger picture, ”she said.
Marshall’s daily contact at the time with the digital editors of the Vogue international editions focused on “setting expectations regarding audience behavior,” and reassured him that that audience would come back in two weeks, she said.
As of May, Marshall said there was a marked shift in readers looking for “escapism” content after being enthralled by breaking news coverage of the pandemic for a month. half before that, and followed to traffic.
American Vogue reported similar traffic patterns to its international co-sites in May, according to Anna-Lisa Yabsley, executive director of content strategy. Although she said May is usually a busy month for traffic due to the Met Gala, it was a “very successful” month even though the gala didn’t happen. Around the time of the event, Vogue unveiled retrospective and historical content packs built out of previous galas, setting May 2020 to be a modern month, as well.
Marshall also said her team began tracking what content readers wanted to eat at different times of the day. By monitoring social communication and keyword research, they found that readers wanted morning business updates. In the evening, they wanted to unwind with more lifestyle products.
Stories of altruism, culture, fashion history, sustainability and ethical production became the main topics that readers read and explored. Knowing what audiences were interested in, Marshall said, the audience team was able to forward the information to an editor, who was then able to strategize their content programming on social media and other channels to increase readership at prime times.
While the use of international editions to inform audience strategy for editions in other countries is not common practice, Vogue has a significant global impact, according to Ava Seave, principal and media advisory group Quantum Media. That’s because customers and consumer behavior are very similar in every aspect of the world in the luxury and fashion coverage topics that Vogue specifically targets.
With that advantage, Seave said there is potential to test that learning against a larger audience without the need for filtering far beyond language.
“All of these countries are so different, yet the audience is now so global that the patterns were similar. It was encouraging in many ways that we could feel a little different from learning from this global dataset and from sharing regularly, ”said Marshall.
Marshall said she can share those audience opinions with the top Vogue advertisers, including major fashion houses as well.
“They want to find out what it means for consumer behavior. And it’s interesting for them to understand what listeners care from the perspective of audience research, but also from what we’ve learned from reading habits and behavior, ”she said.
Megan Jones, a partner at January Digital’s digital media consultancy, told the messengers she works with and produces, including David Bridal, The Honest Company and TUMI, any kind of publisher view they get ahead of positive media buying.
“With real-time buying taking up so much of advertisers’ budgets, it’s hard for publishers to find ways to differentiate their direct purchase investment. And accurately breaking down their consumer behavior is a competitive opportunity when it comes to selling advertising boards, ”said Jones.