Magazine publishers Condé Nast and Hearst are restructuring their sales and marketing divisions to better serve advertisers, while disappointing results at Axel Springer could herald changes there under its new private equity partnership.

Condé Nast and Condé Nast International (which covers 31 markets outside the US) have merged under a “unified global team”, The Drum reported, a development that includes ad and commercial sales functions being brought together under a single structure.

This move builds on efforts in the editorial department, where 45 different content management systems have been reduced to one, which not only facilitates sharing and syndication across editorial teams, but also makes life far simpler for advertisers.

“The outcome is to deliver better ad campaigns, and more easily for one or several brands across markets,” director of strategy and research Estelle Ayer told a London conference earlier this year. (For more read WARC’s report: How Condé Nast balances global and local.)

Luxury advertisers no longer have to deal with individual publishers in different countries but can work far more efficiently through a single CMS and standardised ad formats.

Global chief executive Roger Lynch explained that the changes “will better enable us to collaborate across teams and markets and, ultimately, deliver unparalleled experiences for our consumers and clients”.

In particular, the single sales team will be able to better serve clients’ “holistic needs” and “make it easier for them to do business with us”, he said.

Similar thinking is evident at Hearst where the sales and marketing functions have been brought together in a move aimed at making media buying easier across the publisher’s portfolio.

“This new approach simplifies the process for advertisers and agencies, providing innovative solutions, first-to-market ad products and a seamless ad buying experience across all of our brands and platform,” said company president Troy Young.

Elsewhere, German publisher Axel Springer reported a 10.6% year-on-year decline in ad revenue in its news media business in the second quarter, which, The Drum suggested, could force a rethink of its business model as US private equity firm KKR takes a 27.8% stake.

The company has moved away from its print origins to focus on becoming a digital-first business, a process that has inevitably brought it into conflict with the US tech giants, as both its news and classifieds businesses depend to a large extent on traffic from Google.

Sourced from The Drum; additional content by WARC staff