How The Midst Taps Into the Midlife and Perimenopause Ad Market With She Media

Independent publisher The Midst launched on its new website Tuesday, after more than four years of chronicling perimenopause and the modern midlife experience as a personal blog called Jumble and Flow. The publisher is one of a growing number of media companies to plant its flag in the rapidly expanding world of midlife, a subsection of the women’s health and wellness market that caters to women between their 40s and 50s, said founder Amy Cuevas Schroeder. “The Midst is the gateway drug to the modern midlife experience,” Schroeder said. “We are trying to provide accurate information to women going through middle age and to reinvent the midlife experience.” Midlife and perimenopause became a $17 billion market in 2023, according to marketing insights firm SkyQuest. Advertisers from categories including pharmaceuticals, beauty, wellness and financial services have embraced the space as an opportunity to target women in their peak earning years as they navigate a new stage of their lives. Group Black and She Media Announce Partnership to Channel Ad Budgets to Black-Owned Media As well as interviews with stylist-turned-health-entrepreneur Stacy London, top recent stories include how to adapt to changing food tastes during and after menopause, and how the female brain improves in midlife and beyond. As part of its launch, The Midst also debuted its new partnership with She Media, an ad network and publisher collective owned by Penske Media. The collective serves primarily female creators and publishers and reaches 74 million unique visitors monthly across its network. She Media's advertising technology will monetize The Midst, said founder and CEO Samantha Skey. The Midst will also join She Media’s Flow Collective, a cohort of more than 120 sites within She Media that focus on women’s wellbeing, such as Katie Couric Media and HealthyWomen.org. Since launching last March, Flow Collective now reaches 6 million unique monthly users and is growing by approximately 15% per month, according to Skey. Growing The Midst The Midst started in 2019 as a personal blog, and it launched a Substack in January 2023. Shroeder is its only full-time staff member, but the publisher is supported by a team of six part-time staff and a roster of freelancers. The site now captures around 50,000 unique visitors per month, but it aims to reach 100,000 by March and 150,000 by the end of the year. It has 2,500 free email subscribers, roughly one-half of whom pay either $5 per month or $50 per year for a paid version. In addition to the display ads powered by She Media, The Midst also creates sponsored content, and the site will launch with four partners: Embr Wave, Attn: Grace, Alloy and Nouri. Schroeder wouldn't share specifics but said the bootstrapped operation is debt-free and self-sustaining. The Midst also plans to launch an application that connects women in perimenopause or menopause to healthcare providers, according to Schroeder. Brand safety and tech optimization through She Media The Midst is not alone in its opportunism to help advertisers reach women at the beginning of their journey with perimenopause and menopause. In the past two years, celebrities including Naomi Watts, London, Drew Barrymore, Gwyneth Paltrow, Serena Williams and Cameron Diaz have all either launched or financially backed businesses in the industry. Working with Flow Collective also benefits The Midst, as She Media employs a team of around 40 sales and marketing staff that works with advertisers explicitly seeking to reach these demographics. She Media then takes a “far less than half” cut of the generated ad revenue, said Skey. Through the partnership, The Midst can avoid the brand safety blocks some women’s health publishers navigate in the open programmatic exchange. Publishers can also net better CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) from these direct partnerships and can cover sensitive medical subjects with no fear of demonetization. And She Media offers The Midst a sophisticated ad-tech stack—the same tech powering PMC's premium publishers including Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter, according to Skey. “[Schroeder] is very strong and has the focus to do a really good job,” Skey said. “This is the right positioning at the right time.”