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Total Beauty buys leading women?s lifestyle mobile property

Beauty publisher Total Beauty Media has bought multi-platform celebrity news and women?s lifestyle Web site LimeLife to reach more than 3 million unique monthly mobile and PC Web visitors.

The acquisition pushes Total Beauty to No. 6 on the list of beauty, fashion and style Web sites and No. 1 among female lifestyle mobile Web sites. Emrah Kovacoglu, founder and president/CEO of Total Beauty Media, Santa Montica, CA, said his company bought LimeLife for a couple of reasons.

?They have the largest women's lifestyle mobile property and a strong online lifestyle property that accelerates our entry into that vertical,? Mr. Kovacoglu said.

?We have done a great job of building expertise in several key competencies that are needed to build online media business in content verticals,? he said. ?We have done it in beauty and now are going to do that in women's lifestyle using LimeLife assets and people.?

Total Beauty houses the largest catalog of beauty product reviews, covering hair and makeup trends, how-to videos, beauty-related news and daily blogs. Other properties include BeautyRiot.com, ModernMan.com and KateLuxe.com.

Life?s shift
Thirty million women are accessing the mobile Web monthly, providing the women?s mobile market with the ability to capture a large portion of the $1.6 billion in mobile ad budgets projected for 2013.

With women spending more time on mobile devices and the Web and determining 85 percent of household spending, digital ad spend from consumer packaged goods is anticipated to rise to $3 billion by 2014, according to Forrester Research.

?We see that there is a lot of growth in mobile and on the Web,? said Kristin McDonnell, CEO of LimeLife, Menlo Park, CA. ?Total Beauty saw benefits in acquiring LimeLife with our mobile market. This merge benefits both the consumer and the advertiser.?

LimeLife focuses on women?s entertainment, trends and lifestyle. It claims the largest female lifestyle mobile site, reaching 2 million unique monthly visitors. It extends to desktop Web, Facebook, Twitter and the iPhone.

The My Snaps iPhone application by LimeLife lets consumers store and share pictures of favorite retail and beauty items with an online shopping community.

The application also features news, gossip, horoscopes and relationship advice. Also available for the iPhone are LimeLife?s two mobile games, Fashion Mogul and Hollywood Hangman.

Growing goals
While LimeLife?s target demographic women on-the-go ages 25-44, Total Beauty?s audience changes based on the brand.

?When we think mobile we want to focus more on the utility and benefit that our mobile products can deliver, rather than demography,? Total Beauty?s Mr. Kovacoglu said.

Total Beauty?s iPhone application lets consumers read 280,000 reviews on 45,000 beauty products, ranging from appliances to makeup and skincare.

The application launched last week on the Android platform. Total Beauty plans to grow its beauty application in its category on each platform and market at high intensity.

So, what?s next for Total Beauty?

?This is not flushed out yet, but at a high level we can?t wait to continue growing the base WAP business LimeLife has built,? Mr. Kovacoglu said. ?We want to have their mobile folks grow adoption of Total Beauty?s current iPhone and Android apps, and then we need to lay out a mobile product plan.?

Final Take
Kaitlyn Bonneville, editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer, New York