Wired is one of the first big magazines devoted to technology and the Internet, so it’s fitting that it’s generated half its ad revenue from the web in Q4 2012 — a first for the magazine.

The news was part in an invitation to meet new Wired Editor-in-Chief Scott Dadich at the Consumer Electronics Show next week.

“Join me in celebrating a major milestone for the Web site: We just booked 50 percent of our ad revenue on the digital side during the last quarter of 2012,” wrote Wired.com Editor Evan Hansen. “Yes, the beams are about to cross at Conde Nast, but we’re not expecting the world to end. Just the opposite, actually.”

The 20-year-old magazine first made a serious attempt to concentrate on digital sales in 2006 when media giant Conde Nast purchased the Wired News website for $25 million. At that time, the publication was generating a mere 10 percent of its revenue from the web, Wired tells VentureBeat.

Wired said the majority of its digital ad revenue (90 percent) comes from the website, but revenue from tablet apps and digital magazines is growing. That makes sense considering the influx of affordable tablets on the market as well as Conde Nast’s success on digital stores like Apple’s Newsstand.

“Hitting 50 percent is proof that there is a successful template inside of this industry that can be followed by others and that having a magazine doesn’t necessarily need to be an analog anchor around your technological neck,” Wired publisher Howard Mittman told AdAge.

It’s worth noting that the 50 percent digital revenue share also didn’t come as a result of a decline in print advertising sales. While total print ad pages did experience a decline in 2012, the company also raised its base ad sales rate, meaning print revenue stayed flat.

Photo via Wired

Wired magazine’s got itself a new editor-in-chief.

Scott Dadich, the design vice president at Conde Nast, has been hired to take over for Chris Anderson, who departed the magazine for greener, more robotic pastures two weeks ago.

As Wired‘s former creative director, Dadich is perhaps best known for being the mind behind the magazine’s first iPad app. That honor, however, is a bit of a dubious one: While Wired‘s digital edition was one of the industry’s first, it was also notorious for being fairly poorly engineered: Issues often took up half a GB of hard drive space, which caused iPad owners a bit of a headache.

Either way, Wired parent company Conde Nast liked what it saw from Dadich, who was soon appointed to take over all of the company’s digital magazine efforts.

Now, Dadich is back at Wired, and fans of the magazine should be a bit concerned. Between stints at Texas Monthly and Conde Nast, Dadich has spent over the years a lot of time designing magazines but not too much time running them. So while the his design chops are certainly proven, his editorial skills definitely aren’t.

In comparison, former editor Chris Anderson worked at The Economist for seven years before running Wired, where he stayed for 11 years.

So, does the Dadich move have elements of “style over substance”? For sure, but Conde Nast and Wired need Dadich’s experience bridging digital and print, so we’re going to have to settle for style — at least at first .