Scale for Scale

Could Vox be the next great content company? This week they announced the Group Nine acquisition, making for a combined revenue of $700m turnover in 2022. Scale and quality. CEO Jim Bankoff shared:

“Scale for scale’s sake is not what’s important but quality combined with scale, which is what this story is about, is going to be an advantage in the marketplace.”

But that scale is not why they could be the next great content company. It’s the sum of the parts.

Becoming a great content company requires the leverage of IP and Vox has the right ingredients to do that. As a group they can tease out a story, turn it in to a long form piece. If it has enough substance, turn it in to a podcast. Or take it through to a documentary or show. At each step getting audience feedback and refinement. Oh and they make money at each step anyway.

Story pitch -> Story -> Podcast -> OTT.

This could be the icing on the cake for the digital media company if they could build a serious content arm from that IP.

• We say goodbye to ranking website Alexa.com.
• How WeTransfer went from tech service to Oscar qualifier.
• Karen X’s secrets to successful creator brand partnerships.
• New TikTok rules put big Twitch & YouTube streamers on notice.
• Netflix’s new blog is up..
• Creative duo build adland offices in the Metaverse – you can have one if you hire them.
• After ESPN announces intent to sell the X Games, we get a Twitter proposal on what could be done with it.
• Data on 100 artists who had hit $100k in NFT sales.
• Joe Pulizzi announces his new conference CEX: The Creator Economy Expo.
• [Long form] The Age of Creativity.

Deals/M&A

• Vox Media agrees to buy Group Nine Media.
• MediaLink acquired for $125m by UTA.
• Food52 triples valuation with new investment from TCG.
• MediaMath is in several talks about an acquisition.
• Airmail raises $17m.

Campaign of the Week

• America’s small towns are packed with wonder. Atlas Obscura with Brand US.

• “Today technology is enabling artistic and creative endeavors by a) fueling new art forms, b) enabling far more people with a variety of tools to express themselves creatively and c) scaling the ability to share, display and connect with potential audiences and patrons….Today fifty million people in the United States call themselves “Creators”” –Rishad Tobaccowaia.

Datapoints of note

• The median Twitter audience of NFT artists in this study who exceeded $100k in sales was 7,863.
• Snap paid out more than $250m to Spotlight creators in 2021.
• Instagram surpasses 2 billion monthly users.

That’s it for this week.