Penske Media Flexes Its Enterprise Muscles

Penske Media is treating its NewFronts presentation like a coming-out party. The publisher of 24 brands, including several whose lineages trace back more than a century, has never participated in NewFronts until today. The group, which owns Variety and ARTNews, joined the presentation to rebrand PMC as a more active, cohesive enterprise in the world of editorial. The last year has been an eventful one for PMC. Beginning in May 2020, it acquired events company LDJ Productions; launched Sportico in June; acquired The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Vibe in September; announced the debut of its first-party data strategy, Atlas Data Studio, in March; and took a 50% ownership stake in South by Southwest in April. To complement this growing portfolio, PMC added a slew of key hires, including Mark Howard from Forbes as chief advertising and partnerships officer, Jacie Brandes from Time Inc. as vice president, portfolio sales and Mike Monroe from Sundance as CMO. All of the initiatives have centered around one goal: Elevating the brand awareness of Penske Media and establishing an infrastructure that allows it to do business on the enterprise level, said PMC's Monroe. “More than anything, we're announcing Penske Media and our intention to work with marketing partners in new, different and bigger ways,” Monroe said. Scale by cohesion As publishers vie for advertising dollars, many have used acquisitions to boost the size of the readership they can offer to partners. While PMC did make a number of acquisitions in the last 12 months, by pooling its publications’ resources, it can offer advertisers 135 million unique visitors per month, a number that dwarfs many of its more prominent peers. This reality prompted PMC to create an internal infrastructure that allows it to operate on both an enterprise level as Penske Media, as well as on an individual brand level (as Rolling Stone, for instance). “When marketers hear ‘PMC,’ we want them to associate it with culture, whether that’s entertainment, fashion, music, or sports,” Monroe said. SXSW and NFTs In line with its objective of rebranding, PMC acquired a 50% ownership stake in the Austin-based festival South by Southwest in April. The publisher declined to share specific plans for how it plans to incorporate the PMC brand into the event, but the parallels between the cultural dent of SXSW and the arts and music background of PMC offer a number of potential alignments, Monroe said. “There are opportunities on the ground in Austin, but our websites are not tied to any particular time or place,” Monroe said. “There is an opportunity to consider SXSW outside of the way we think of it as a fixed time in Austin.” Additionally, as part of its NewFront presentations, PMC gifted 50 non-fungible tokens to some of its key marketing partners. Mexican artist Moxarra Gonzalez designed the NFTs, and their inclusion highlights the new reputation of innovation that PMC hopes to grow. With South by Southwest’s IRL Future in Limbo, Is It Worth It for Brands to Show Up?

NewFronts

In Its NewFronts Debut, Penske Media Flexes Its Enterprise Muscles

The publisher’s 24 brands have mostly conducted business individually––until now

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg