Medium Gets Its First Advertiser: BMW

BMW will sponsor a Medium “collection” of 100 design posts called Re:form, which will be written by former senior editor at Dwell Sarah Rich within a six-month period.

The digital publishing platform was created by Twitter’s ex-CEO Evan Williams in 2012. This BMW sponsorship marks the Medium’s first attempt at generating revenue.

The six-month sponsorship will include BMW videos appearing the bottom of each article and text at the top that says “Presented by BMW.” Medium staffers will also generate up to five sponsored articles about the automaker.

Rather than measuring impressions and pageviews, Medium will guarantee BMW a total reading time metric measured in minutes.

While some of the platform’s articles are commissioned by staff (and published on the it’s online-only magazine Matter), the company says that 99 percent of about 10,000 articles published each week are not commissioned.

Yet Medium has attracted high-profile personalities, writing about topics from sports and comedy to military security. As Ad Age reports:

Medium quickly gained a reputation for attractive design and high-caliber contributors, including best-selling authors like Jon Krakauer and Walter Isaacson and business leaders like Elon Musk. On Monday, Mitt Romney published a short post about a family vacation, complete with a photo collage.

Medium is also planning a collection of posts about tech, led by Wired contributor Steven Levy, and a music collection edited by The Source co-founder Jonathan Shecter.

The Medium sponsorship is part of BMW’s 4 Series Gran Coupe campaign, which will be promoted with digital video, print and limited TV commercials beginning in the fall.

ComScore estimates that Medium had more than 833,000 unique U.S. visitors in June, but traffic scores vary and ComScore does not measure mobile views which, according to Medium, account for 9 million unique global visitors during the same month.

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