Marketers, Gwyneth Paltrow would like to sell you an ad.
Goop, the email newsletter and website from the actress, will start running advertising to help bolster revenue at the company, which until now had relied on e-commerce sales and affiliate links (where companies pay for links directing traffic to their site). Alison Koplar Wyatt, a former ad-sales executive at style website Refinery29, is joining Goop as its first chief revenue officer. She is responsible for building the site's advertising business and hiring a team.
"We don't want to bring on partners that aren't relevant to the site just to make revenue," she said. "Instead, it's about building it in conjunction with commerce."
The site is talking with several potential advertisers, but has not inked any deals yet.
Ms. Paltrow started Goop in 2008 as an email newsletter and blog to share her favorite things. It's grown into a website with articles about clothes, food, travel destinations, beauty products and more. That's put her in competition with the original lifestyle guru, Martha Stewart, who took a swipe at Ms. Paltrow in the pages of Porter magazine last year.
"She just needs to be quiet," Ms. Stewart said. "She's a movie star. If she were confident in her acting, she wouldn't be trying to be Martha Stewart."
A month later, Ms. Paltrow hired former Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia CEO Lisa Gersh to serve as Goop's chief executive.
But Ms. Koplar Wyatt doesn't see them as direct competitors. "That's not the audience we'll be looking to capture," she said. The Goop audience "wants to have that gorgous arrangement Martha would make, but they don't have time to DIY it, so they want to know the best place to buy it."
The audience, however, remains relatively small. Digital measurement firm ComScore doesn't track the site's visitors because there are so few, according to a ComScore spokesman. A Goop spokeswoman declined to share the site's traffic totals or its number of email subscribers.
Goop, which is unprofitable, is investing in rebuilding and restructuring its staff. The site employs 22 people, split between New York, where the commercial team is headquartered, and L.A., home of the creative side. Ms. Paltrow, an Academy Award-winning actress, is in the L.A. office every day, according to Ms. Koplar Wyatt. "She is involved and accountable with the business," she said.
The company declined to discuss revenue, but a New York Times report said Goop generated about £1.1 million in revenue in 2012. Sales are listed in British pounds because the company was formerly based in the U.K., but has relocated to the U.S.
