Playboy Web site: new advertisers, new rate card, new record!

Business Wire, May 16, 1996

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 16, 1996--Playboy Enterprises Inc. is adding six new advertisers on the Playboy Web site (www.playboy.com).

Thomson Financial, CUC International, SmartWine and L.A. Williams Productions are the latest companies to go online with Playboy. In addition to these, the Playboy site will be carrying advertising by iGOLF and Block Financial. The six new sponsors join a host of continuing Playboy Web site advertisers, which include c-net, Sauza Tequila, Magellan and Black Dragon Productions.

In another new development, Playboy released a new Internet rate card that uses a CPM ad pricing structure, guaranteeing advertisers a minimum number of exposures. Advertising prices on Playboy's site range from $1,250 to $26,250 per hyperlink for a month. In addition, Playboy can create a unique, custom-designed Web page within its site for all advertisers, including those without sites of their own.

The Playboy Web site's success among new media advertisers is largely due to its popularity with browsers. Playboy's Web site is the tenth most visited site on the Web among home users, according to the research company NPD Group's most recent PC-meter study.

Every month Playboy offers its browsers such high-interest, high-impact features as the Playboy Interview, movie, music and book reviews, and samples of non-fiction that distinguish Playboy's journalism. In the past month, traffic to the Playboy site has grown from an average of 3.3 million hits per day to the current 3.8 million. For three consecutive days from May 8 to 10, Playboy topped its own record with more than 5 million hits a day.(1)

Playboy is capitalizing on its latest achievements by expanding the Playboy Web site. New features include the introduction of Playboy's Online Catalog "store" which gives cyber-shoppers a 20 percent discount on all its goods. The catalog offers an array of Playboy products, including Playboy jackets, shirts, cuff links and watches; Playboy's cutting-edge CD-ROMs; Playmate trading cards; sensual videos, and back issues of Playboy magazine.

(1) Attention Editors -- Current record is as of May 16.

CONTACT: Playboy Enterprises Inc., New York

Diane Stefani/Arlene Daily, 212/261-5000, ext. 3635