There's a massive amount of media consolidation afoot

Media holding companies are gobbling up hundreds of digital media outlets.

Image via Pxhere

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There's a massive amount of media consolidation afoot

Back in 2018, I wrote a piece titled “The VC-fueled media bubble is popping.” In it, I claimed that we’d reached the end of an “era that was fueled by easy VC money and Facebook-inflated traffic.”

The argument is probably pretty self-explanatory for those who read this newsletter, but to recap: In a period spanning roughly from 2012 to 2016 or so, investors collectively poured billions of dollars into digital media startups that claimed to have amassed huge Millennial audiences. Backed by charts depicting hockey stick growth, these startups announced massive fundraising rounds, sometimes into the tens of millions of dollars.

We all know what happened next. Facebook pivoted away from news, revealing these audiences to be a mirage. The startups, which had never produced much revenue to begin with, suddenly didn’t have any hockey stick graphs to point to. As a result, the funding dried up, and they were forced to either greatly reduce their valuations (Vice, Buzzfeed), sell at fire sale prices (Mashable, Mic), or shut down completely (Dose, Little Things).

The investors licked their wounds and returned to making bets on things like crypto and tech.

Or so I thought at the time. As it turned out, they never stopped investing in media, it’s just that their strategy changed.

Instead of making massive bets on individual outlets, investors are pooling their money and using it to make hundreds of acquisitions, usually under the banner of a holding company.

To give you a sense of what I mean, here are seven media companies that have been particularly active in the M&A space over the past few years. I’ll italicize their acquisitions:

Vox Media: SB Nation, The Verge, Vox.com, Recode, New York Magazine, Cafe Studios, Punch, Hot Pod, Curbed Network, Epic Magazine, Eater, Polygon.

Minute Media: FanSided, Mental Floss, Wazimo, Player’s Tribune, The Big Lead, 90min, DBLTAP.

Recurrent Ventures: Futurism, JancisRobinson.com, Mel Magazine, Donut Media, BobVila.com, Kitchenistic, Task & Purpose, Car Bibles, TheDrive, Domino, Field & Stream, Interesting Things, Better You, Military Spouse, Outdoor Life, Popular Photography, Popular Science, Saveur, The War Zone.

Red Ventures: Bankrate, CNET, Healthline, Lonely Planet, The Points Guy, Healthgrades, Gamespot, Greatist, Medical News Today, Metacritic, MyMove, PsychCentral, TV Guide, Slumber Yard, ZD Net.

Dotdash/IAC: Verywell, Investopedia, The Balance, The Spruce, Simply Recipes, Serious Eats, Byrdie, Brides, MyDomaine, Lifewire, TripSavvy, Liquor.com, Treehugger, ThoughtCo, PEOPLE, Better Homes & Gardens, Allrecipes, Southern Living, InStyle, REAL SIMPLE.

Bustle Digital Group: Bustle, Mic, Elite Daily, W Magazine, Gawker, Some Spider Studios, Scary Mommy, Fatherly, Inverse, Zoe Report, Flavorpill, The Outline, Input, Nylon, Romper, The Dad.

Outside Media Group: athleteReg, Backpacker, Beta, Better Nutrition, Bicycle Retailer, Cairn, Clean Eating, Outside Magazine, Climbing, CyclingTips, The Fly Fishing Film Tour, Gaia GPS, Gym Climber, IDEA Health & Fitness Association, National Park Trips, Outside Business Journal, OutsideTV, Oxygen, Peloton Magazine, Pinkbike, PodiumRunner, Rock and Ice, Roll Massif, SKI Magazine, Trailforks, TrailRunner, Triathlete, Vegetarian Times, VeloNews, VeloPress, VeloSwap, Warren Miller Entertainment, Women’s Running, Yoga Journal.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but with just an hour of Googling I was able to find over 100 acquisitions, most of which occurred within the last few years. A few things jump out to me when scanning this list.

• Most are backed by investor money: I purposefully avoided listing acquisitions made by old school media conglomerates like Disney, News Corp, and Axel Springer. Most of the holding companies I listed above were launched during the 21st century and are backed, in part, by outside investors.

• Smaller bets: Gone are the days when investors drop $200 million on Series C rounds. Most of these acquisitions were in the low eight figure range. In the few cases of larger spends, a more mature legacy outlet was being acquired (eg, Dotdash’s acquisition of Meredith titles and Vox Media buying New York Magazine)

• Niche: VCs used to invest in general-interest outlets that aimed to achieve massive scale. Even Mashable and Mic, both of which started out focused on niche topics (tech and policy, respectively), eventually pivoted to general interest. But most of the outlets I listed above are targeted to niche communities. These holding companies, in other words, achieve their scale by amalgamating audiences across dozens of verticals.

• 100% ownership: These holding companies aren’t taking equity stakes; they’re buying the whole pie, most likely so they can have complete control over each outlet and capitalize on synergies. Speaking of which…

• Synergies, Synergies, Synergies: Sure, every company that acquires another company claims to do so for synergistic reasons, but it’s easy to see how each of these holding companies aim to combine their sales teams and tech platforms to generate bigger audiences and serve better, more targeted ads.

So what are we to take away from all of this? Well, for one, that investors never really pulled out of digital media. But also that good ol’ fashioned consolidation never went away. Just as the Time Incs and Conde Nasts of the world spent most of the 20th century trying to expand into every monetizable niche, their 21st century counterparts are operating under the same playbook. We probably still have a few years before we find out whether this new crop of investors is savvier than the last.

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Simon Owens is a tech and media journalist living in Washington, DC. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Email him at simonowens@gmail.com. For a full bio, go here.