Condé Nast re-realigns and combines digital and print advertising sales, by product

In what is another indicator of a continuing trend in the magazines business, Condé Nast has announced it is merging (it used the term realigning) its digital and print advertising sales operations into one, multi-platform, multi-brand unit. 

According to a story in MediaPost,  Condé Nast Digital and the Condé Nast Media Group will now be combined at the individual brand level, under chief marketing officer Lou Cona. "By integrating its sales and marketing expertise into the Media Group, we are positioned for maximum growth and are better aligned with the industry," Cona said on Tuesday. 

Under pressure to create greater efficiencies of scale, Condé Nast in early 2009 replaced a scattered digital approach with a single division dubbed Condé Nast Digital. The alignment of assets came just over two years after Condé Nast seized operations and maintenance of its individual magazine sites -- including Glamour and Vanity Fair -- from what was then called CondéNet. Along with broad ad sales assistance, CondéNet had since overseen portals like Concierge and Epicurious, along with Wired Digital.

The bigger picture: looking 15 years down the road, digital circulation and advertising revenues from new devices like the iPad will make up roughly one-third of Condé Nast's total publishing revenues, Nicholas Coleridge, the managing director of Conde Nast U.K., said last month. It was not clear, however, whether Coleridge was referring to the U.K. -- or global -- market.