AuFeminin Looks to Expand Its Reach

By ERIC PFANNER
Published: November 7, 2010

PARIS — Got a question about work, parenthood, sex or shopping? About how to balance all of these in a 24-hour day? Or, perhaps, about whether to serve red, white or rosé with a blanquette de veau?

For 12 million French women, there is a single place to turn: auFeminin.com, a Web portal that offers advice on all of these things and many more, from its own editorial staff and from other women who visit.

AuFeminin, which was started in 1999 by a French husband-and-wife team, has grown into a rare example of a European Internet company that is a world leader in its field. With a global following of more than 37 million, according to ComScore, an audience measurement firm, auFeminin rivals American women-focused Web destinations like iVillage.com and Sheknows.com.

Increasingly, sites like these are filling the role once played in many women’s lives by glossy magazines, whose circulation has stagnated in many developed countries. Web sites like auFeminin add an interactive element, in the form of online discussion forums.

“The real difference between men and women is that women need to talk, and that is the same everywhere in the world,” said Marie-Laure Sauty de Chalon, chief executive of auFeminin, during an interview at the company’s Paris headquarters.

The growth of auFeminin is underpinned by favorable demographic trends in the digital world. According to ComScore, women account for 46 percent of the global online population, but that portion has been growing, and in North America women are already in the majority. Female Internet users spend 8 percent more time online per month than men, an average total of 24.8 hours, according to ComScore.

Now auFeminin, having conquered its domestic market, is thinking bigger. Over the next year, it wants to open sites in Brazil, China, India, Russia and the Arabic world, with a substantial investment from Axel Springer, the German publisher, which acquired a controlling stake in the company three years ago.

“There are only 30 million women in France, so our growth is going to have to come from somewhere else,” Ms. Sauty de Chalon said.

So far, international expansion has been had mixed results for auFeminin. Spinoff sites like goFeminin.de in Germany and oFeminin.pl in Poland have done well, for example, while soFeminine.co.uk in Britain has struggled in a crowded English-language market. AuFeminin also has established a presence in several countries with geographical, linguistic or historical ties to France, like Canada, Vietnam and Morocco.

France still accounts for a majority of the business, and it is generating strong growth in advertising, the company’s primary source of revenue. For the first nine months of this year, auFeminin reported net income of €6.4 million, up 92 percent from the level of a year earlier, as revenue rose 39 percent, to €27.6 million.

While shares of auFeminin, which are traded in Paris, have slumped since the takeover by Axel Springer, the company’s contribution to Springer’s bottom line has encouraged Springer to pursue another French Web company, the classified real estate advertising service SeLoger.com.
“They have hit on a very successful content proposition,” said Mike Shaw, director of marketing solutions at ComScore, which counts auFeminin among its clients. “They understand the female mind-set, and that is scalable. You don’t have to rediscover the secret sauce in every language.”

As it expands, auFeminin is bumping up against tougher competition, both internationally and at home. In France, the company’s success has attracted imitators like the Web sites Journal des Femmes and Terrafemina, as well as revamped online efforts from women’s magazines like Elle and Marie Claire.

At home and abroad, auFeminin increasingly finds itself competing with Glam Media, a U.S. operator of online advertising networks. Glam operates only a handful of its own sites, but groups together other women-focused sites so that marketers can reach large audiences with a single ad purchase. Its networks reach 180 million people worldwide, according to ComScore.

Outside the United States, Glam is strong in Germany, where it has a partnership with the magazine publisher Hubert Burda Media, and it recently set up shop in France. Glam is racing auFeminin to enter China and India, and it has a fast-growing network in Japan.

“One of the advantages we have in the long term is that we are a global company, and digital advertisers are starting to look more for international solutions,” said Ernie Cigogna, general manager of Glam Media International. “AuFeminin is primarily European.”

Ms. Sauty de Chalon said auFeminin had no plans to enter the biggest Internet market, the United States, saying competition there was already too fierce. With articles, videos and user contributions on topics ranging from current affairs to cooking, AuFeminin is also similar to iVillage, part of NBC Universal, which counts more than 45 million monthly visitors, ComScore says.

But three-quarters of iVillage’s audience is in the United States. In France and other markets, auFeminin competes with U.S. Internet companies like Google and Facebook for advertisers’ spending and women’s attention.

While auFeminin relies heavily on Google’s search engine as a source of traffic, Ms. Sauty de Chalon was quick to point out what she described as philosophical differences between auFeminin and U.S. Internet companies.

While Google and Facebook have drawn criticism in Europe for their handling of consumer data, for example, auFeminin treats privacy as a top priority, she said. Contributors to its forums are allowed to use pseudonyms.

And, in contrast to the anything-goes discussions that take place in some Internet forums, moderators of auFeminin’s discussions wield considerable power to direct or censor them according to local standards. In France, for example, where surrogate pregnancies are against the law, auFeminin bans discussion of the topic.

Talk of race or ethnicity is also frowned upon, and certain terms are blocked by the moderators. “I don’t believe in absolute freedom of speech,” Ms. Sauty de Chalon said. “It cannot be put ahead of human rights.”

Ms. Sauty de Chalon makes no apologies for her French worldview. As her company expands into new markets, she said, the best marketing for auFeminin may be its users.

“I think French women represent something,” Ms. Sauty de Chalon said. “We don’t defend feminism. Women of 30 are done with that. We want to be treated fairly, equally. What we defend is femininity. That, I think, is a French specialty.”