Montreal certainly has no shortage of things to do at night, and now Montreal-based Nightlife.ca is letting the city’s hipsters and club kids alike know what’s up with a relaunched and refreshed version of its website.
The site, which is owned by Montreal-based mediaco NewAd, went live late last week and features a new look, expanded user engagement and new advertising opps. Advertisers who came on board for the relaunch include Rogers Media, which partner with NewAd on a music compilation called Nightlife Noise 5, and Annabelle Cosmetics.
With an average of 50,000 unique visitors each month and 400,000 average page views (a number it hopes to increase to one million via its new content), Nightlife.ca was redesigned to both further engage its audience and create more opportunities for advertisers, Thomas Leblanc, EIC and creative content director, Nightlife.ca and Nightlife magazine, tells MiC.
‘We really focused on making the content easy to share and easy to comment using Facebook and Twitter. They were really at the centre of the strategy for that,’ he says. ‘We are also a publisher, and in Montreal, we’re a really credible brand when it comes to culture, so we took inspiration from New York magazine. We wanted to find the best way of doing editorial content, yet make it easy to share and comment.’
The site features all original content, offering advertising opportunities that are integrated into it. Annabelle is the title sponsor of two new fashion blogs, one in French and the other in English, that focus on ‘what it’s like to be a young woman in Montreal,’ Leblanc says. Annabelle products are featured as the wallpaper behind the blog, and Annabelle ads fill each unit. Rogers is the other advertiser integrated into the relaunched site, with display ads for the compilation it’s sponsoring and Nightlife-penned articles on many of the featured bands.
The site will be promoted via OOH advertising on the NewAd network, and through Nightlife magazine, a free monthly with a circulation of 45,000. There is also a site relaunch event on May 13 – which will debut Nightlife Noise 5 as well – with 1,000 Montrealers on the guest list. Rogers, Annabelle, Nike and Coors Light are on board as sponsors.
Leblanc says that Nightlife.ca is open to expanding advertising opportunities similar to the Annabelle sponsorship to other categories as well.
‘What we do is act as content strategists,’ he says. ‘We help people design the best content strategy for the community, and help [brands] be authentic with our crowd.’
