'If the client wants audience or data at scale, you go to Google or Facebook:' Gary Vaynerchuk is launching a new website, and isn't chasing a mass audience
- Gallery Media Group's One37pm is launching a website after softly rolling out on social media in June.
- One37pm is focused on "the lifestyle of entrepreneurship."
- Ralph Lauren, Belvedere, Gillette and Budweiser are some of the site's first advertisers.
- The publisher is shying away from programmatic advertising initially to focus on branded content, much like the business model of PureWow, which CEO Ryan Harwood founded and sold to Vaynerchuk in 2017.
Gary Vaynerchuk-owned Gallery Media Group is building up a stable of media brands - but doesn't want to go the same route as other digital publishers that have primarily focused on amassing huge audiences through social media.
So it's taking the seemingly archaic step of launching a content website and trying to get people to visit it, rather than flooding people's news feeds with videos and articles.
After softly rolling out men-focused One37pm through social media accounts, a podcast and voice skills in June, the brand launched its website today.
But aren't websites over? Aren't too many digital brands struggling to consistently attract readers and advertisers?
CEO Ryan Harwood said the advantage of having a destination site in addition to distributing content on platforms is to crank out a higher volume of content than is possible on social media and experiment with different story formats.
"In this day and age, I still think a website is very important [because] there is an ungodly amount of content still consumed on websites," Harwood said.
"From a consumer perspective, I think brands these days are built on the platforms - that's where you're going to get discovered and people are going to become infatuated with you."
Harwood is hoping young guys become infatuated with One37pm's unique positive voice.
"The lifestyle of entrepreneurship and how that's intersecting so much with culture these days," said Harwood about the site's focus. "The publication is about generally trying to make positivity louder and give these young guys permission to do what they love doing."
There will be stories about how celebrities and athletes are venturing into entrepreneurship (like the NBA's Carmelo Anthony investing in pizza chain Nobodys Pizza) but One37pm will also focus on the "everyday guy coming out of college, [or the guy who] didn't go to college or is in his day job and isn't happy - we're trying to actually inspire with those stories."
One37pm is trying to go direct to consumers' phones
The male-aimed site is also collecting email addresses and phone numbers to build a database, which will be used to ping users information and stories in the future.
"Nobody gives their cellphone [numbers] out so if you're able to form a one-to-one connection via text with the consumer, I think we'll be very precious about that and this will not be a daily text message in my opinion," he said.
"I envision it being a channel that we use when we have a lot of value-add content to give the consumer - it's very actionable."
The new brand is going to have a similar business model as PureWow
Harwood founded and built women lifestyle site PureWow before selling it to Vaynerchuk last year.
The bulk of PureWow's revenue comes from branded content and sponsored articles, which is also how One37pm plans to earn revenue.
The site will also make money from display advertising, though Harwood doesn't plan to run programmatic advertising initially because "programmatic is solely dependent on how much reach and scale you have on your website and we're just launching."
Ralph Lauren, Belvedere, Gillette and Budweiser are a few of One37pm's launch advertisers. Ralph Lauren, for example, bought a large ad placement to promote its sponsorship as the US Open's official outfitter.
But won't it be tough to attract big advertisers long term, without racking up huge audience numbers through social media?
"When it comes to websites, I think it is a bit of an antiquated viewpoint that in order to be a media brand that can help brands that you need X amount of scale on a website," Harwood said.
Instead, brands increasingly want to work with publishers that have creative ideas for advertising and have brand equity, he said.
"If the client wants audience or data at scale, you go to Google or Facebook - they have all the audience every publisher has combined and then some," he said.
"If a client or agency is still asking about website uniques as the sole determining factor in collaborating together, they likely don't understand how the internet works anymore."