PRIMEDIA, the publishing company that owns
Seventeen, New York, and American Baby magazines, said it plans to use its advertising inventory to take
stakes in start-up Internet companies.
The company is taking a cue from CBS, which has bartered promotion for
pieces of new companies, including Marketwatch, Medscape and Office.com. PRIMEDIA says it has 33,000
pages of advertising inventory to draw on.
“PRIMEDIA has excellent multimedia opportunities to expand its consumer and
business-to-business brands,” says Rogers.
“In order to take full advantage
of these opportunities, including attracting new media talent as well as
funding the growth of this area from sources that are in addition to
PRIMEDIA’s own cash flow, we will be pursuing venture structures that
maximize value for shareholders and enable alternatives for raising capital.”
The company already operates a few consumer Internet properties, including
Apartmentguide.com, Seventeen.com, Equisearch.com, Modernbride.com and Americanbaby.com.
PRIMEDIA’s
business-to-business unit includes Digibid.com, Internettelephony.com and MediaCentral.com.