Launched in 1999 by music marketing entrepreneur Clark Benson and Northwestern University fund-raiser Karen DeMars, eCRUSH was designed with viral marketing in mind, as members can send email “crushes� to non-members, who must then register with eCRUSH to digitally unmask their admirers.
The addition of eCRUSH is both a chance for Hearst to sell eCRUSH inventory to existing Hearst advertisers, and to sell inventory across Hearst’s sites to existing eCRUSH advertisers–including, The Wall Street Journal, Vonage, and Universal Studios, among others.
In February, Hearst is slated to unveil new Web sites for its three teen magazines–CosmoGIRL.com, Seventeen.com, and Teenmag.com–featuring interactive content, photos, video, and podcasts. Each site with have its own social community, which will be powered by a third-party vendor.
More than one million unique users visit the eCRUSH Network of sites each month and 90% are 13 to 19 years old, according to internal metrics. Also, eCRUSH claims about 2.4 million registered users. The company had an EBITDA of $1.4 million in 2006.
Interesting to see the acquisitions continue in the social networking space. Some of these are going to be great buys which make a lot of sense, others are real dogs which look good at first, only to turn into havens of low-grade ad inventory.
I’m trying to remember what vendor is running the social communities at Hearst. That’s going to be a nice partnership for whoever won the bid.
More at Online Media Daily. Thanks Meir!
