Inside Top Gear publisher Immediate Media’s TV and ecommerce acquisition

In a move that will help it diversify revenue streams and cut deeper into the lucrative £3 billion ($4.5 billion) British crafts-lover consumer market, the acquisition includes the TV channel which runs on Sky, Virgin, Freesat and Freeview, and digital assets such as the 24/7 streaming channel and e-commerce shop Jewellerymaker.com.

Immediate Media chief executive Tom Bureau told Digiday the acquisition helps it further ensure its revenue are “well balanced” and not beholden to the fluctuations of the digital advertising market.

“We don’t want to be over-exposed in any area, and that includes digital advertising and everything that comes with it like the adoption of programmatic, ad blocking, fraud, viewability,” he said. “There’s no question you need significant scale to succeed in digital ad markets. So where we do have scale we will focus on that, but we also want to have a very strong transactional side.”

Immediate Media already has a chunky 40 per cent share of the crafts magazine market with 16 titles in that field including “Simply Knitting” and “Mollie Makes.” But Bureau said the jewellery-making market is worth £400m ($603m), second only to the paper craft market at £500m ($754m). Jewellery Maker’s 60,000 customers represent a “better monetisation engine” currently than its flagship title Radio Times despite the fact it commands a monthly audience of 10m unique visitors, he added.

Read the full article here

Source: Digiday

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