Jason YoungPresidentZiff Davis Media's Consumer/Small Business Group
Based in New York, Jason Young became President of Ziff Davis Media's Consumer/Small Business Group in 2004. He oversees print and online sales, marketing, editorial and business development for PC Magazine, PCMag.com, ExtremeTech.com, DL.TV and Digital Life. Young started his career at Ziff Davis in 1990. Prior to joining Ziff Davis, Young was VP of Advertising Sales and Business Development at TheStreet.com.
Q. What's the most heavily trafficked area of PC Magazine's website? A. The center of gravity has always been our product reviews, both in the magazine and on our website. The popular stories change frequently but earlier this month, the two big ones have been on the Apple iPhone and Microsoft's new Window's Vista operating system.
Q. Did you design your website based on traffic, or focus group input? Or a little of both? A. Unlike a magazine where a redesign may be done every couple of years, the web is a more organic entity. We're constantly tweaking the design and interfaces. Our most useful resources are our users and the real-time matrix of how they're interacting with the site. We also use focus groups and panels.
Q. For the web, did you hire many people from outside the print world? Or did your existing print staff have to master a new skill set? A. We relaunched our web business in 2001, when we set it up as a separate business. The people we hired had web experience and knowledge. In 2005-2006, we folded the web back into our overall business. Along the way, we've encouraged the participation of our print teams.
Q. You've presented virtual trade shows on security solutions and the like. What are some pros and cons of that approach versus a live trade show? A. We'll do four or five virtual trade shows online this year. For consumers and marketers, there's nothing quite like in-person contact, product demos and interacting with sales persons. You can never replicate that. But the virtual trade show educates, builds awareness and allows us the ability to extend the total audience around a concept or idea. And you get a similar type experience in terms of information. For the marketer, it captures qualified leads.
Q. Besides audio and video, roughly what percent of your editorial content is exclusive to online? A. The vast majority of it. Print is finite in the number of pages to go into an issue. We review thousands of products every year. Online, there's so much more we can do, and at no incremental cost.
Q. What are you up to in the mobile marketplace? A. That's something we're looking at right now. Those aged 25-plus are not huge users of mobile handsets, but when we look out to our next generation of users, their behavior shows they're more comfortable with mobile. So that'll be changing in the coming decade.
Q. Beyond that, what do you see as your next big digital application? A. The great thing about technology -- and we know this better than anyone -- is that there will always be things coming that we can't even conceive of yet. Look at YouTube! "Digital Drivers" is about the migration of print brands into digital platforms. That's where we were 12 years ago. We've got our foot in the water in just about every new application. In some areas, we need to be waist-deep.
Q. Ziff Davis reaches 22 million early adopters via your print, online and event offerings. How influential are those consumers and business execs in the computer field? A. They are the most important business decision makers in the world, the key influencers empowered to allocate budgets. On the consumer side, they influence everyone in their cul-de-sac on when to buy and how to use new products.
