New acquisitions are quickly tucked into the margin-sensitive organization’s wider office space, ad-tech stacks and other back-office functions. Overlapping costs are largely stripped out, rather than continuing to operate the assets as separate, adjacent businesses.
October 17, 2019

Digital-media-merger-mania accelerated towards the end of 2019. In the past couple of weeks alone, Vice said it was acquiring Refinery29, Vox Media acquired New York Media, and Group Nine scooped up PopSugar. There were 83 digital content M&A transactions in the first three quarters of 2019, with a considerable uptick in the third quarter, according to investment bank Luma Partners. Read more below:

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Top Stories
Publishing in the Platform Era
New acquisitions are quickly tucked into the margin-sensitive organization’s wider office space, ad-tech stacks and other back-office functions. Overlapping costs are largely stripped out, rather than continuing to operate the assets as separate, adjacent businesses.
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Subscriptions
“This [app] is one of the first building blocks toward growing digital subscribers. Contributions have been a great success but we also need to tap into the importance of digital subscriptions,” said Juliette Laborie, director of digital reader revenues at The Guardian.
Sponsored by Bannerflow
From media buying to creative, some marketers swear by in-house marketing. But in private, other marketers say their companies are taking on too much. For a free $5 Starbucks gift card, take this anonymous survey and tell us what you think.
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The Programmatic Publisher
For some publishers, keyword blacklists can block as much as 90% of a single campaign’s impressions, which translates to severe revenue losses.
Sponsored by Integral Ad Science
According to new State of the Industry research, brand suitability (a term describing a marketer’s desired targeting parameters, including subjective variables like location and demographics) is emerging as a top concern for digital media pros. In 2020, marketers say it will be just as important as brand safety.
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The Programmatic Marketer
Before Sellers.json, if an advertiser wanted to check whether an exchange directly worked with a publisher or not, they needed a way to pull reports directly from those ad tech vendors.
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Ironing out a solid e-commerce strategy is a dire necessity for independent DTC brands. For travel clothing brand Paskho, the solution was an AI-driven marketing intelligence approach.
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Audio Anywhere
After years of brand investments and focus on improving measurement, podcasting is about tip into a platform-dominated digital medium.
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DIGIDAY+ MEMBER EXCLUSIVE
Of the 135 publishers surveyed by Digiday in a wide-ranging research survey this Fall, more than 50% of publishers reported that direct-sold advertising was a large or very large source of revenue for them.

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