ITV (LSE: ITV) is continuing its ambitious effort to find £150 million from online by 2012, partnering with John Menzies Digital to launch ITV Digital Newsagent, a digital-edition magazine store.
Just like PriceTerrier, the price comparison site recently launched with Kelkoo, the site is merely a commercial white label partnership, actually hosted by the e-edition store for French newsagent Relay, whose owner Lagadere partnered with Menzies to form the John Menzies Digital JV. The JV launched an English version of Relay.fr’s download site, MagazinesOnDemand, in June and hired a digital director from e-edition platform Zinio a month later; it claims over 20,000 subscribers and also powers WH Smith’s digital magazine store.
Magazines cost from £2.50 per issue for a subscription though there’s one mag free to new customers as a promo; there’s over 100 to choose from but they require users install downloading software.
This alone isn’t going to push ITV to its target, but the logic for ITV seems to be: lots of partnerships, lots of little revenue streams. The newsagent store becomes a top-nav section in ITV.com’s entertainment section. Commercial terms between ITV and John Menzies Digital aren’t known. Release.