August 6, 2024

Smooth Media Enters Energy Market With First Major Acquisition

We have two M&A stories in today’s newsletter, along with a look at the FT Edit App and some quarterly earnings results.

But first… I’m excited to announce the first full panel for the AMO Summit: the State of Media M&A. The goal of this panel is to bring together the three core constituents in the M&A market: bank, private equity, and media operator.

  • Paul Miller, CEO of Questex. Between the sales process he and the team just went through earlier this year and their goal to acquire more assets, Paul offers a unique perspective on the M&A markets.
  • Robert Gray, Operating Partner at EagleTree. As a buyer, Bob can offer perspective on what buyers are looking for in prospective acquisitions.
  • Daniel Pitchford, CEO of Collingwood. As a banker who advised the Aging Media Network on its sale to WTWH, Daniel talks to both media operators and private equity every day. He knows what they’re thinking.

This panel will offer great perspective. If you plan to transact in the next 12-24 months, don’t miss what they have to say. Get your tickets now.

On August 14th at 1pm ET, I am hosting a webinar, in partnership with BlueConic, to explore Christian Science Monitor’s journey with personalized content strategies. In this discussion, we’re chatting with Kevin Henneberger, Lead Senior of Digital Promotion & Analytics at Christian Science Monitor and Hayat Ali-Ghoneim, Customer Success Manager at BlueConic.

In this, we’ll discuss tactics including:

  • Replacing traditional pop-ups and email-acquisition tools to achieve a 3x increase in click rate engagement
  • Building a new exit intent widget, testing algorithms, adjusting filters, and enhancing reader experiences while supporting key metrics like continuation rates and paywall stop rates
  • Dynamic content recommendation strategies extended to assets such as “Related Stories” and “Next Up”

Register today to make sure you don’t miss it. We’ll share a recording with all registrants afterwards.

Smooth makes a deal

Smooth Media, an agency for “knowledge creators,” announced today it acquired Energy Central, a community platform and media publication for electric power industry professionals.

While terms of the deal were not disclosed, Josh Kaplan, co-founder and CEO of Smooth Media, told A Media Operator that the revenue is “over seven figures, not by much. And so we’re going to hopefully add a lot more multiples.” He also said the business was profitable.

But why energy? Kaplan explained it was a vertical they’ve been eyeing due to heavy investment in North America, grid demand, AI, innovation, etc. “It’s a similar criteria that we used at Morning Brew. It’s one that we definitely adopted from the Sean Griffey Bible of niche media,” Kaplan said.

I there’s a lot going on, if there’s money going in and there’s a lot of people that need to know what’s going on, that makes it a good place for us to focus on. And so just check the boxes. And, and again then at a company level, the founders have built a really great base for us to grow on with the audience they already have.

With this acquisition, Smooth Media now has 16 team members: two writers at The Publish Press, four at Energy Central, and 10 at Smooth in sales, account management, and creator recruitment. Kaplan explained they’ll invest in a site redesign. “A little bit of a facelift,” he said.

Additionally, one of the goals is to put more focus on editorial. “We’ve already hired a journalist, hopefully the first of a couple to have both community and original reporting combined for the audience,” Kaplan said.

The real opportunity is on the revenue side, which has historically been Smooth Media’s specialty. The three co-founders—Kinsey Grant and Jenny Rothenberg round out the trio—formerly worked together at Morning Brew during the pre-acquisition scale years. All left within months of Axel Springer buying the brand.

Kaplan said:

We’re going to combine forces with her [VP of Sales Audra Drazga] industry connections and industry know-how and years of doing it. Plus we have Colin Richardson, who was at Industry Dive for seven years. Between our collective intelligence with Morning Brew and everything, we’re going to update the sales approach.

This acquisition marks a big step for Smooth Media, but the transition from being just an agency has been in the works for a while. “We represent about 20 creators and that business is running really well,” Kaplan said. The focus is on what the team calls knowledge creators. “It’s a creator who’s educating their audience on something in particular,” he explained.

The transition to a media company started with Colin and Samir, YouTube creators who discuss the creator economy.

I started helping them when they were about 100,000 subs on YouTube in the beginning of 2021. They’re phenomenal video producers. They’re phenomenal experts in their category. I was able to help bring in a lot more of a business operations expertise so we could sell more advertising ahead of time. About six months after we met, we launched The Publish Press as a joint venture. We’ve scaled the list. We’ve scaled the team. We’re now getting into events.

While Kaplan didn’t discuss the equity breakdown in the joint venture, he said, “we have a meaningful amount of equity. It’s a good partnership where they help with opening access, helping grow, helping with the quality of the content. We get to bring our expertise on a day-to-day operational level, hiring, selling ads, running the core of the media company.”

Now there are two brands. That’s where the team plans to invest more time. Kaplan said, “growing the creator side is going to be very gradual over time. It’s an agency business; it’s really a great cash flow business. We want to see how we can make a splash in buying, or we might even start publications, depending on the vertical.”

It starts with Energy Central, but Kaplan has other industries in mind, but didn’t specify which ones.

AMO PRO: BridgeTower Media Completes Second Acquisition in 2024

BridgeTower Media, owner of many local business publications, announced the acquisition of Virginia Business last week to expand its portfolio, marking its second deal this year.

In this piece, AMO spoke with Hal Cohen, CEO of BridgetTower, about the acquisition of Virginia Business and its fit into the business’ portfolio. We delved into the business has been transitioning from a heavily print advertising business to digital marketing services.

AMO Pro members can read now or get a subscription to access this story and the full archive.

AMO PRO: The Financial Times’ FT Edit App Proves a Hit Retention Tool

In March 2022, the Financial Times announced a new app price at $4.99 a month. The pitch was simple: readers would get eight stories a day on topics that were much broader than just business and financial news.

Fast forward to today and AMO has learned that the product has been working both as a standalone product and as marketing for the more expensive FT subscription. FT Edit’s Editor Hannah Rock told AMO, “they [readers] come via FT Edit, they like what they see, and they upgrade.”

While it has been working for them, there is a lot more to accomplish and a need to find more growth at the top of the funnel. AMO freelancer Esther Kezia Thorpe digs into this and more in this piece.

Become an AMO Pro member and read the full story here.

AMO PRO: Quarterly Earnings for Local News Providers Gannett and Lee Enterprises

We’re moving into quarterly earnings and as part of your subscription to AMO Pro, you get access to all of our analysis. At the end of last week, both Gannett and Lee Enterprises reported their earnings. A major theme for both of them? Digital transformation.

We’ll be looking at The New York Times, News Corp, Dotdash Meredith, and TechTarget this week, so sign up for AMO Pro so you don’t miss any of them.

It’s an action-packed week with a ton of stories and coverage. And all of this is leading to the AMO Summit on October 15th here in New York City. Be sure to get your tickets today so you don’t miss the must-attend event in media. Have a great week!