The first weekly stand-alone digital men's magazine has doubled its target in its debut ABCe, as competitors claim its figures are incomparable with traditional print titles' circulation.
Dennis's Monkey had a launch ABCe figure of 209,612. The figure ABC Electronic measures the number of people who open the magazine when they receive it via a free email.
Kerin O'Connor, executive director on Monkey, told Press Gazette: "We see it as the next evolution, its media's missing link. It's taking fairly traditional things but making them fresh by using video and interactivity."
O'Connor said that readers spend on average 45 minutes reading Monkey. He said: "To advertisers we look at it as a print magazine, we say here's our circulation, there are five ad slots within it, and you will get seen by this many people.
It's a very similar operation to a print magazine."
Jo Smalley, publishing director of Nuts and Loaded at IPC, said it was impossible to compare Monkey's online ABCe figure to the lads' mags ABCs.
"People in print land are trying to compare it to an ABC and it's not."
Both IPC and Emap already offer traditional websites for their lads' mag brands. Nuts.co.uk has 479,088 unique users a month, while Emap's zooweekly.
co.uk attracts 522,000.
Dennis Publishing is set to launch a further two digital magazines' later this year, with Natmags also planning a digital magazine for teenage girls, possibly under its CosmoGirl brand.
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