Condé Nast is a subsidiary of a Newhouse company, Advance Publications, which is controlled by Donald Newhouse, 89, and his son, Steven O. Newhouse, 61. Jonathan Newhouse, 65, a cousin of Si, is the chairman of Condé Nast International, home to British Vogue and dozens of other international editions. That arm is something of a corporate oasis, given that Europeans, unlike Americans, have yet to give up the magazine habit.
While many of the roughly 30 newspapers in the Newhouse chain have endured layoffs and other cost-saving measures, the Newhouses’ fortunes have not suffered, thanks to the family’s $10.4 billion sale of its cable businesses to Charter Comunications in 2016. A provision of the sale gives Advance an additional annual payment of $150 million, considered the equivalent of a dividend, cushioning the parent company and its controlling family from the magazine publisher’s recent losses.
Condé Nast has gone through fits and starts as it has sought to revise its corporate identity for the digital age. Until last month, Dawn Ostroff was the head of Condé Nast Entertainment, the unit devoted to digital video, as well as film and television projects that was started in 2011. She left the company for Spotify with little warning.
But the video business she oversaw is very much on the rise and will significantly narrow the company’s losses this year, two executives said. Mr. Sauerberg highlighted the division earlier this summer in a companywide email. “We crossed an important milestone,” he said. “Our web and video businesses have grown so significantly, their revenue surpassed print for the first time in the company’s history.”
The company is building its future around that business. That means Condé Nast is morphing from a company of glossy print magazines with high-priced ads into a producer of short-form videos with commercials. The videos range from how-to shorts affiliated with Glamour and Allure to more elaborate celebrity interviews produced for Vogue and W. The Vogue series, “73 Questions With,” has generated more than 300 million views since it began in 2014.
Volume will be a key to returning to profitability. Each month the company produces an average of 417 videos that play on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and its own websites. Some series tackle subjects not often associated with Condé Nast. “Last Chance U,” a documentary focused on college athletes from disadvantaged backgrounds, stands out from the other fare. Produced by Condé Nast, it appears on Netflix.
In addition to Ms. Ostroff, Mr. Sauerberg lost another top lieutenant last month with the exit of Josh Stinchcomb, who oversaw 23 Stories, the company’s in-house advertising unit.
