Generation Y has grown up with a world of information at its fingertips. Much to the chagrin of many in the advertising business, newspapers, television and magazines aren’t the only game in town anymore.

“That is the audience that advertisers want to get at,” said Angela Renkoski, assistant professor of magazine journalism at Drake University. “Twenty-somethings have a lot of purchase power, but they’re slippery. Everybody is trying to find a way to appeal to the younger audience, but it’s hard to capture them. As a group, they are very fragmented.”

So a market that advertisers salivate at the prospect of tapping into is also a market that has proved difficult to pin down, with technology giving them almost limitless options for gathering and sharing information.

“They’re much more tech savvy than any previous generation,” Renkoski said. “And many companies are still trying to figure out how to use that.”

With that in mind, Meredith Corp. is making moves it believes will attract those younger consumers, from new features on many of its magazines’ Web sites, including the company’s flagship publication, Better Homes and Gardens, to the purchase earlier this year of ReadyMade, a multimedia brand targeting adults in their 20s and 30s. “Acquiring ReadyMade strengthens our reach to adults in this very desirable demographic,” Steve Lacy, president and CEO of Meredith Corp., said in a speech at the company’s annual shareholders meeting.

The ReadyMade brand includes a do-it-yourself lifestyle magazine (described by The New York Times as an “indie-rock Martha Stewart Living”), a Web site, a branded book, custom marketing operations and products such as project plans and kits. Its younger audience differs starkly from those of some of the company’s more popular brands, such as Better Homes, with a median reader age of 47.9 years old, and Ladies’ Home Journal, with a median reader age of 51.2. But publications like Parents, with a median age of 34, and American Baby, with a median age of 30, could be aided with the purchase of ReadyMade as its readers age and begin raising families.

“We hope ReadyMade will attract readers in their 20s; then we can move them right into Parents magazine, then to Better Homes and then to More [magazine],” said Karla Jeffries, Meredith’s senior vice president of publishing finance and administration. “We think once they come to us, they will follow our publications through for many years.”

“This is a perfect strategy for Meredith,” Renkoski said. “They seem to have a good hold in all the other demographics. Now, they hope to attract readers in their 20s and move them along to their other publications as they grow older. ReadyMade is perfect for that, because its readers are the audience they hope to capture.”

Jeffries said the future of the publishing industry is no longer tied exclusively to the printed word. Younger readers cannot be counted on to turn to magazines like Better Homes, or even ReadyMade, to get the information they want.

“The key is to serve the consumer,” she said. “We want to allow them to access the content any way they want to, whether that is from a print edition, the Web or video. And Better Homes is well on its way to providing that. Its biggest asset is its content. We’ve got to be wherever consumers are. This is absolutely the future of media. Content for the reader in any form they want.”

Better Homes’ revamped Web page, BHG.com, is expected to launch in February, and a combined Web site for the company’s parenting magazines – Parents, American Baby and Family Circle – is expected to debut next June, Jeffries said.

Renkoski said the Internet has already become a fixture in a lot of magazines, with print editions directing readers to Web sites for more information on given topics.

“In a lot of magazines today, there is hardly a page that doesn’t attempt to point the reader toward their Web site,” she said. “The Internet is becoming a factor in everything they do.”

In March, the company formed Meredith Video Solutions to develop video content and secure distribution outlets across multiple platforms.

“Consumers are demanding more video and are drawn to Web sites that feature compelling video content,” Lacy said.

Video Solutions also will offer content to the company’s television stations, which accounts for 25 percent of Meredith’s business, said Art Slusark, the company’s vice president of corporate communications and government relations.

But this push to attract younger consumers is not something that has developed overnight, Slusark said. The company formed an interactive media group six years ago and “committed to building it,” he said.

“We realized very early on that this was the future of this business,” Slusark said. “All of this has been in the works for several years.”

With the increasing cost of producing a glossy magazine, Renkoski said, many publications are giving up on print editions altogether.

“Some that are geared toward a younger audience are doing away with their print editions to be primarily on the Internet,” she said. “Teen People publishes exclusively online now.”

Despite these trends, Renkoski said, the magazine industry is growing.

“People say magazines are dying, but there are more launches and newsstands get more crowded every year,” she said. “And while newsstand sales as a whole are down, circulation keeps going up. Ad revenue is also up slightly.”

Jeffries said the publishing industry has to transform itself into a multi-media industry, developing new technologies and focusing on providing content that is accessible in many forms.

“We have to consistently be looking out to the future,” she said. “As the Boomers are aging, it is important to look for younger readers, and those readers want information in many different ways. So we have to be prepared to supply them with that.”

Lacy said Meredith delivers its content through 26 magazines, 14 television stations, more than 30 Web sites, nearly 200 special interest publications, more than 400 books, and video and licensing activities. The company also expanded its online marketing capabilities with the acquisition of O’Grady Meyers, an interactive marketing services firm that specializes in custom Internet advertising, promotions, e-marketing and Web site development.

“Even if these ventures take readers away from our print publications, someone was going to do this anyway,” Jeffries said. “The media world is heading in this direction whether we go there or not.”