Conversant Media partners with I Fucking Love Science as it relaunches Techly
Digital media company Conversant Media has relaunched its lifestyle and technology masthead Techly.com.au, partnering with US-based website I Fucking Love Science, Mumbrella can reveal.
The partnership will see Conversant Media commercial IFL Science’s business in Australia and New Zealand and will allow Techly to amplify its native campaigns via IFL Science.
Speaking to Mumbrella, Zac Zavos, Conversant Media managing director, said: “Our strategy is to effectively have companion sites for our key mastheads, with Lost At E Minor we work with Bored Panda. We bring them in on key briefs where it’s a reach extension.
“We relaunched Techly recently and it’s absolutely humming as a result, and we identified IFL Science as the perfect companion site for Techly.
Techly was relaunched this week in an effort to refocus the masthead on what Conversant wanted it to achieve.
“It had been live for about a year and a half and it was getting some traction but it didn’t have the voice we wanted it to have. We put a working party together and completely re-made it: new logo, which has an underscore which humanises that premium feel to it, and a totally clear editorial direction around solving problems for inquisitive millennials,” Zavos said.
“The relaunch has increased our Australian traffic on the site.”
Explaining the commercial partnership with IFL Science, Zavos said Conversant Media provides display advertising for IFL Science’s Australian and New Zealand audiences, with those display ads amplifying native content on Techly.
“What we’ll be doing is working with our advertising partners and providing them the opportunity to be on IFL Science and primarily, and initially, that will be through display media,” he said.
“The strategy is the native element will come through on Techly, display, reach and amplification through IFL Science. There’s opportunities to use display inventory to drive to native content on Techly.”
Conversant Media commercial manager, Ben McGregor Urquhart, said: “Using the f-word in a publication’s title is unusual but it increases the site’s appeal to readers who are young, inquisitive and want to push boundaries. Our initial commercial conversations have been extremely well received. Clients are super excited to be on the IFL Science platform in the Australian market.”
While Conversant Media is partnering with international brands, Zavos said he wasn’t necessarily interested in launching his mastheads overseas.
“Lost At E Minor is commercialised in the US and UK through our partners over there. It’s less about launching over there but being smart about the partners you use,” he said.
“Our business is growing very nicely, 16 staff, Roar.TV is doing well and we’re doing a million video views a month. It’s been very successful and we’re doing the same with Lost At E Minor.TV which is going live this week.”
The relaunch, and partnership with IFL Science, follows on from the digital media publisher launching a new creative services division called Conversant Create in September last year.
Miranda Ward
I have no idea WHY they ever launched Techly in the first place. The site is a lame light-on effort which almost seems like a wanna-be cool name in search of a reason to exist.
User ID not verified.
Good on you Jack, I bet conversant are scrambling to work out why they didn’t account for your ground breaking opinions before going live.
User ID not verified.
Matt, I have DECADES of experience clocked up in the techspace and I can tell you that I have seen more than enough of these sites come and go, once publishers and individuals whip up a ‘me too’ effort in the vain hope of grabbing a few crumbs of traffic of ad revenue which spill off the table, instead of thinking smart and hard to identify a suitable niche and gun for that. Most people in the tech field also look at Techly and say the same thing, it’s a hip little ‘dotcom’-style name but a complete head-scratcher of a site.
User ID not verified.