NEW YORK — Some may complain the September Vogue is so full of ads it’s hard to find the editorial, but those people probably aren’t Vogue readers.
In any case, they may be missing the point.
Last year, 160,000 women spent 30,000 hours over six weeks viewing pages of advertisements culled from the September issue of Vogue and posted online at shopseptembervogue.com, said a Vogue spokeswoman.
Today, the magazine plans to roll out an upgraded version of the site — now called shopvogue.com — with more than 330 pages of ads from 150 advertisers, down from last year’s count of 442 pages and 186 advertisers.
The Web site has fewer ad pages and advertisers this year because two supplements were not included, said the Vogue spokeswoman.
A new Look Book feature lets Internet surfers group items they like on one page. If an item is offered for sale online, visitors can click to buy from the advertiser’s online store, or they can print out the Look Book to take with them when they go shopping.
Halle Berry, Jessica Alba, Debra Messing and Eva Longoria have created their own Look Books that can be viewed by visitors to the site, and some of the items they’ve chosen will be given away in a daily sweepstakes.
Visitors can also view streaming video from advertisers, such as runway footage. The site will stay up for six weeks.
The service is free to Vogue advertisers. Later this year, Vogue will do a holiday version with a “wish list” that surfers can create and mail to friends.
The site uses technology from Internet special-effects software maker RichFX Inc. of New York. In June, Active8media LLC of Atlanta, which helped create the first version of the site, filed suit against Advance Publications Inc., the parent company of Vogue publisher Condé Nast and of WWD, for patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation, according to a press release issued by Active8media. That suit is still pending, said Todd Mannik, president of Active8media, who declined further comment. The Vogue spokeswoman also declined comment on the suit.