Condé Nast president Robert Sauerberg is to take over next year from chief executive Charles Townsend, who is moving on from the role after more than a decade to become the magazine company’s chairman.
Since taking on the president role in 2010, Sauerberg has been driving Condé Nast’s efforts to develop a digital strategy to offset the declines in print revenues that have affected the industry as a whole.
“In five years of working closely with Bob [Sauerberg],” Townsend said, “I saw first hand how committed he was to deepening Condé Nast’s fundamental mission of quality publishing and, at the same time, to taking advantage of the latest in technology and its possibilities.”
Over the last five years Condé Nast has doubled its digital revenues and increased its online audience from 17.2m to 87.3m.
However, Sauerberg told the Wall Street Journal that digital growth was not yet offsetting declines in print revenue, which has recently taken a further hit as the beauty industry is reducing its spending with Condé Nast.
Condé Nast publishes some of the world’s most successful magazines, including Vogue.
It has also, through parent company Advance Publications Inc, invested in social news site Reddit, and it runs other digital operations such as tech site Ars Technica.
Conde Nast was focused on tapping the so-called “millennial” market where “spending power is increasing quickly”, added Sauerberg.
