SEATTLE–Hearst Magazines is going both on- and off-deck to offer ringtones, images, daily horoscopes and editorial content from Cosmopolitan, Seventeen and CosmoGirl to wireless users.
Hearst is teaming with Volantis to targeting 12- to 34-year-old females with its offerings, which will be available through Cingular Wireless L.L.C. and Sprint Nextel Corp. The effort will be supported by Volantis’ technology including applications, tools and platforms designed to deliver optimized content across handsets.
The Hearst Corp. subsidiary publishes 19 U.S. periodicals and 145 million editions. Customers of privately held Volantis include Discovery, HP, IBM and Reuters.
“We are thrilled to provide women with the opportunity to have even easier, always-on access to their favorite information sources for fashion, fun and other lifestyle trends,” said Glen Ellen Brown, vice president of Hearst brand development.
Meanwhile, Bango is powering three new mobile content portals for properties of the publishing giant. The U.K.-based provider of direct-to-consumer content is launching mobile storefronts offering content from the three magazines.
Users can access the catalogs by sending a text message to short codes to receive a link to each site.
While short codes have yet to gain mass-market acceptance among U.S. users, the agreement may prove to be a substantial win for Bango, which has agreements with Cingular Wireless L.L.C., Orange plc, Vodafone Group plc and other carriers to deliver off-deck content.
“The user experience (with wireless portals) is truly mobile because the entire process takes place on the handset—no PC is required,” said Anil Malhotra, Bango’s vice president of alliances. “Bango detects which network the user is on and presents the optimal one-click payment method to make paying for content as easy as possible.”
