Meredith Sells Personal-Finance Site Money to Digital Advertising Firm
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After previously failing to find a buyer for Money — and shutting down the print edition — Meredith has found a new home for the personal-finance brand.
Meredith announced Tuesday that it closed the sale of the Money brand to Ad Practitioners, a Puerto Rico-based digital advertising and media company that operates a network of websites, including ConsumersAdvocate.org.
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It’s the latest in a string of recent M&A deals in which struggling print brands are pairing off with digital media companies looking to build on their brand equity. Last month, Vox Media acquired New York Media, publisher of 51-year-old New York magazine, following similar deals including Condé Nast selling the venerable wedding title Brides to Dotdash, an internet publisher owned by Barry Diller’s IAC.
Meredith acquired Money as part of its January 2018 acquisition of Time Inc. and is the fourth “non-core” property that the media company has sold off in the U.S. Last year, Meredith sold Time to Marc Benioff, co-founder of Salesforce.com, and his wife, Lynne, for $190 million, and offloaded Fortune for $150 million in cash to Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon. In May, it sold Sports Illustrated to Authentic Brands Group for $190 million.
Meredith earlier this year killed the print edition of Money magazine, founded in 1972, with the June/July 2019 edition the last to be published. At the time, Meredith said it had decided to not sell Money.com after all and instead would invest in the property.
The sale to Ad Practitioners comprises the Money.com website, which averages 4 million monthly unique visitors, according to Comscore.
Currently, 14 employees work on Money.com at Meredith’s 225 Liberty Street offices in New York City. Under terms of an employee lease agreement between the parties, the 14 staffers will remain Meredith employees until Jan. 31, 2020, at the latest, at which point they will transition to Ad Practitioners.
“We are pleased to find a great home for the Money brand and wish all parties great success under the new ownership,” Meredith chief development officer John Zieser said in a statement. “We continue to make significant progress on our asset sales and expect to shortly announce additional transactions at attractive multiples.”
Founded in 2016, Ad Practitioners says its core business is matching brands with audiences across over 150 categories, including personal finance, health, home, lifestyle, insurance and software. The company is based in Dorado, Puerto Rico.
Earlier this month, Meredith announced that it will shut down the print edition of women’s lifestyle mag Family Circle, which has been a newsstand staple since 1932, after the December 2019 issue.
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