Hearst magazines is making a novel addition to its sites: it has tied up with online game developer Arkadium in a two year deal to add a number of games to its magazine sites of Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Good Housekeeping and Harper’s Bazaar, among others. In addition to adding all manner of online video, magazines are beginning to feature games on their websites as a way to boost traffic, an article in Friday’s WSJ noted. Yahoo Games’ success – the site drew 21 million unique visitors in January, according to comScore Media Metrics – has served as inspiration. Plus, the article cited Forrester Research that indicates online gamers are not the stereotypical teen –  half are aged 30 to 59.
Hearst has a jump on other magazine publishers, the story says. The company initially offered games on its teen titles, such as CosmoGIRL and Seventeen. After noticing that the games were drawing between 5 percent and 10 percent of the traffic to the sites, it decided to offer them across the board, especially now that it’s in the middle of a major redesign of its magazine websites —many of which had been run until recently by iVillage. Other magazines are expected to jump on the bandwagon shortly.