Nowness, the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton- owned Web site, is rebooting today with a video-centric mobile-friendly look.
The new site, which publishes one video story a day, mixes videos on art, culture and fashion that will range in length from one minute to 20 minutes. They will include works from the likes of Bjork, Ai Wei Wei, James Franco, Francesco Vezzoli and Robert Schwartzman. Viewers will be able to create their own playlists from the site’s archive and share it via social media.
In order to generate revenue, Nowness offers brands the ability to develop sponsored content with its team, or select sponsored playlists. Nowness also plans to offer e-commerce through third parties.
“There’s no advertising on Nowness and there never has been. Our way of monetizing the site is on branded content, making films together,” the site’s editor in chief Claudia Donaldson told WWD.
She explained that even though LVMH owns Nowness, the French luxury conglomerate contributes branded content to its site.
“We are an independent brand in the LVMH group — even their branded content is part of our revenue model,” Donaldson said, referring to LVMH. “But more often than not we work with brands outside of the group.”
The decision to go all video with a strong mobile-first point of view is due mainly to how users interacted with Nowness’ content. The site, which before the re-launch garnered roughly 500,000 unique users a month, had amassed the bulk of its traffic via social media channels on mobile devices.
“When Nowness was started four years ago, it felt like we were the vanguard of a digital evolution,” the editor said. “The site was 80 percent still content and 20 percent video.”