LadBible Australia is looking at growing its team, and launching a new division SportBible Australia, at a time when many digital platforms are winding down or shutting.
The local arm of the UK-founded publisher has been operating for just over a year, growing from a team of four to 12 across its editorial, sales and product teams, and is looking to expand further with three more staff.
Joseph Summers, LadBible Group Australia general manager, says it opened in Australia after “accidently” building an audience here from its UK publication, reaching 13 million Australians every month across the group.
“The reason why we’re here is because we had that big audience, and we wanted to come over and start producing a lot more local content for them,” Summers told AdNews.
“Also to work with brands on a local level, because working from the UK in Australia was just very painful. So we've always had a big Australian audience. Coming over here was just about making more content, and not so much growing, because we were already very big, but getting that engagement, and really producing quality content that we're proud of.”
LadBible has a core audience of 18-35 year-olds, although Summers says it does attract a considerable audience over 35, while its gender is now evenly split. Since opening locally, the LadBible Australia team has worked with a list of big brands, including Amazon, Menulog, XBox, Oporto and the NRL.
In the middle of a pandemic, which has put media owners under further financial pressure due to brands’ tightened marketing budgets, Summers revealed the publisher is launching SportBible in Australia in the next couple of months. Live sports has just started to reopen, with NRL last week and AFL on June 11, and Summers says audiences are “itching” for its resumption.
“Because there's been such a shortage, everyone has really been craving any kind of sport content, whether it's looking back at the past, looking at highlights, or whether it's looking at the future and what’s going to come,” Summers says.
“We all know that sport is going to kick off eventually... Not only do we feel like there's enough appetite for us to launch this publication here, but I think we're also going to have a unique position in the market. As with SportBible globally, we want SportBible Australia to be a platform for players and stars to be able to tell their story and show their personality without any judgment.
“Then on the other side of this, we very much want this publication to represent the fans and to give them a voice as well. And I think, when you look at sport publishers in Australia, there's not many that do that. They tend to be more traditional, such as Fox or ESPN, and more opinionated in that sense. So we're excited about this project and it's going to be a key focus for us in the next few months.”
Summers says the impact the pandemic has had on LadBible’s advertising revenue is likely not “dissimilar” to other publications, but the publication’s heavy social media presence is helping it pull through.
While Facebook, which helped build LadBible, continues to provide it with the most traffic compared to other social media platforms, Summers says the publisher has diversified across TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.
“A lot of brands who maybe had a lot of money, a lot of briefs out there, are now probably scaled back, and there's just not that much in the market,” Summers says.
“But, we're still seeing success to be fair. Quarter on quarter, we'll probably see growth. I suppose social media is probably one of the least affected channels in media at the moment.
“More people, as they're staying in doors and they're isolated, what we're seeing is that usage and traffic, and people that come into our publications, has increased significantly. And I think the brands know that as well, and they've probably not impacted their social or digital briefs as much as their out-of-home or cinema brief. So we're probably lucky in that scenario.”
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