G/O Media Eyes an Expansion Years in the Making

The digital media company G/O Media, the publisher of a dozen titles including Gizmodo, Jezebel and Deadspin, turned a profit in 2021 for the first time since its creation three years ago, in large part due to digital ad revenues that rose 53% from 2020. The publisher saw total revenue rise 45% year over year, though the privately held company, owned by private equity firm Great Hill Ventures, declined to provide specific figures. Although revenue comparisons to 2020 will naturally prove flattering, G/O Media points to its newfound profitability as the culmination of a years-long internal transformation, which was an at-times painful process punctuated by criticisms of the management team that led to nine of the ten original editors in chief to leave the company. 5 New Details That Could Affect G/O Media’s Acquisition of Quartz Now, with a cadre of new leadership aligned to the vision laid out by chief executive Jim Spanfeller, G/O Media has embarked on a period of expansion previously delayed by the pandemic. The company made headlines in April when it purchased business publisher Quartz––the first in a series of acquisitions G/O Media hopes to execute this year. Other titles under consideration are in the travel, health, wellness and fashion sectors. “We now have a dozen sites, so as readers move across them we can develop a pretty robust profile of their interests,” Spanfeller said. “Adding Quartz, which is well established and has a great history, just made a lot of sense for our strategy.” G/O Media, which has no subscription revenue and only a nascent events program, relies almost exclusively on advertising for its revenue generation. Given marketers’ preference for transacting at scale, the publisher will need to increase its reach to remain viable in the cookieless future, said Ameet Shah, partner and global vp of publisher operations and tech strategy at Prohaska Consulting. Traffic and advertising growth Even after absorbing Quartz, which lost $6.9 million last year, G/O Media anticipates its end-of-year profit will rise between 30% to 40%, Spanfeller told Adweek. The publisher projects its digital ad revenue will increase 40%. The digital media company has seen its audience reach increase over the last year, with first-quarter traffic rising 10% compared to 2020, according to measurement firm Comscore. The uptick comes despite a four-day freeze in March when the GMG Union went on strike to push management to the bargaining table. The G/O Media portfolio attracted roughly 63 million readers per month between June and December 2021, per Comscore, excluding Quartz. Quartz itself reached an average of 4.6 million monthly visitors across January and February, but the publisher expects those numbers to rise following its April decision to lift its paywall. Including Quartz, G/O Media now employs 350 people, 250 of which are in editorial roles. The parent company will also absorb the sizable newsletter slate of Quartz, whose Daily Brief alone reaches more than 575,000 daily readers; G/O Media, for its part, reaches 1.5 million readers across its 15 newsletters, according to the publisher. How G/O Media can more resemble Quartz When G/O Media announced it had acquired Quartz, staff at the business publisher expressed surprise and concern. Cultural discrepancies between the two companies, such as their contrasting remote-work policies, could wrinkle a smooth merger. (After a transitional period of 30 days, Quartz employees living in New York, Los Angeles or Chicago will have to work from G/O Media offices all but six days a month.) But Quartz staff shouldn't be concerned about the dilution of their company culture or mission, Spanfeller said. If anything, rather than transform Quartz to resemble a traditional G/O Media property, the company aims to evolve its current portfolio to more closely resemble Quartz. Since launching G/O Media, Great Hill Ventures has sought to professionalize the blogging that once defined its titles, including the former Gawker Media sites Gizmodo, Deadspin and Jezebel. Quartz, with its signature style and high-level analysis, represents the direction in which G/O Media aims to grow, according to Spanfeller. In that vein, the company has no plans to significantly change the Quartz website, outside of potentially diminishing the promotion of its Daily Brief newsletter. But, given the ad-load common to G/O Media properties and the ultimate goal of the acquisition, the business publisher will likely see an uptick in programmatic ad placements, Shah said. The media company also hopes to use the premium audience of business professionals that Quartz attracts to lure blue-chip advertisers to the G/O Media portfolio. There, titles like tech-centric Gizmodo and auto-focused Jalopnik could provide them with incremental reach. G/O Media currently attracts marketers with its hard-to-reach audience, and Quartz will only strengthen that draw, said Lauren Buscone, an associate media director at Mediahub. “The audience fit drove us to work with G/O Media, because we wanted to reach a young, diverse viewership for our campaign,” Busonce said. “If we wanted to reach that demo again, they would certainly be in the conversation.” The 6 Most Important Media Mergers of 2021

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G/O Media, With Quartz in Tow, Eyes an Expansion Years in the Making

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