Author: rssmasher

IBM reported higher profit and sales for its latest quarter, with newer businesses like cloud computing contributing more than half of total revenue.

The month after the strategy call in which Papa John’s founder John Schnatter used the N-word and made other racially insensitive remarks, the pizza chain hired Publicis Groupe’s Fallon to handle brand campaigns. The agency and client have now split after one month, spokespeople confirmed. “In mid-June, Fallon was retained by Papa John’s International to…

Has the #MeToo movement lost its steam? “I’ve been told that I am fuckable by a male colleague,” Golin chief creative officer Caroline Dettman told a mostly female audience at the agency’s #HaveHerBack event in New York Tuesday evening. “I have been asked off a pitch because I’m told I come off too strong.” Dettman…

Successful political candidates know how to win in constantly changing, volatile circumstances. Their future is based on how well they connect with voters when the next day, or next hour, could change everything. The same is true for brands, especially now as we navigate fraught times where head-snapping change buffets every aspect of our lives….

With 64 games and more than four weeks of action behind us, 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia has finally come to a close. After beating Croatia in a 4-2 battle, France has been named World Cup champions for the first time since 1998. From Belgium’s 94th-minute game-winning goal against Japan to Russia upsetting Spain and…

LinkedIn Wednesday announced several features to help its members enhance their posts on the professional network. Director of product management Pete Davies detailed all of the new features in a blog post. Captions can now be added to videos in order to provide more context, as well as to help users who are viewing them…

This week U.K. specialist publisher Future announced the purchase of technology platform and publisher Purch for $132.5 million (£101 million), marking Future’s fifth, and largest, acquisition so far.

The deal means Future, which publishes titles like TechRadar, PC Gamer and T3, will beef up its consumer tech titles by adding Purch’s sites Tom’s Guide, Tom’s Hardware and Top Ten Reviews. Future makes money through display advertising, e-commerce and affiliate revenue and this added scale aims to curry favor with U.S. advertisers in the consumer tech space.

“We create content services that fit a need and then we monetize that need,” said Aaron Asadi, chief operations officer at Future. “I don’t see any difference in doing that between the U.S. and the U.K. This isn’t about territory, it’s about audience-first thinking.”

A U.K. headquartered company, Future has had a presence in the U.S. for nearly two decades and around 200 people in two New York offices. The majority of its audience across its portfolio comes from the U.S., according to Asadi. For TechRadar, 32 percent of its audience — 9 million unique monthly users — comes from the U.S., while 14 percent from the U.K.

Despite this audience split, the company generates more profit from the U.K., according to analysts. “Future’s revenue per U.S. user has, to date, been below par, relative to the U.K., so there should be some upside monetization opportunity now,” said independent media analyst, Alex DeGroote.

He went on to add that according to the publisher’s financial report, Future’s profits globally have been around £15 million ($12 million), roughly £10 million ($13 million) of which are from the U.K. The addition of Purch will mean the majority of profits will be coming from the U.S.

“In the media and tech sector, the cutting-edge innovation takes place in the U.S., it’s not straightforward to acquire and integrate them,” said DeGroote. “This is binary. It could make or break Future if they have bitten off more than they can chew.”

With acquisitions come people and technology duplications. Both publishers have robust tech platforms. Purch licenses its ad tech stack, including ad tech platform RAMP, and PIP, its customer relationship management platform. Future has invested in its e-commerce platform Hawk, and has been in the process of integrating all sites to the platform in recent months. How the two technologies mesh could cause risks, according to industry experts.

“It would be foolish to enter an acquisition of this size with a prejudiced mindset of what tech works best and what doesn’t, our view is to test, test, and test again,” said Asadi. “This about revenue growth, it’s not an acquisition to find synergistic benefits, but to unlock the obvious revenue opportunities.”

According to analysts who were on the investment call, Future is offering new shares at a heavy discount to the current market share price, indicating there is some resistance in the stock market to the acquisition. Partly, insiders say because U.K. publishers have historically done poorly in the U.S. and Future’s share prices have ballooned in the last year, making it tricky to value it.

“Future is one of the best-performing publicly quoted media companies in the U.K.,” said DeGroote. “Several years ago it was almost off the radar, it’s a real acquisition and restructuring story.”

The post Future buys Purch to boost US revenue appeared first on Digiday.

This year, AT&T has been promoting its breadth of services with a campaign promising “More of Your Thing,” and the newest installments are aimed at movie-goers. Two new 90-second spots from the telecom and agency BBDO pay off the campaign’s concept by blending multiple genres into each ad. The result are mini-films that veer in…

By now, you’ve probably learned that KFC is that kid you grew up with who was willing to try just about anything. However quizzical some of the brand’s stunts are, the method to the seeming madness tends to work–and has clearly helped bump the QSR’s fortunes. If you were told that KFC would put together…

You won’t be able to take a quiz that determines which Real Housewife you are on the same website that publishes in-depth reporting anymore. BuzzFeed quietly rolled out a new website, buzzfeednews.com, on Wednesday morning solely for news. The company shared the new website in a tweet with a GIF of the landing page. BuzzFeed…