Posts by mwright

After winning the highest-ever valuation on BBCTV’s Dragon’s Den, The Little Girl (or Boy) Who Lost Her (or His) Name – designed for individual children – sells 500,000 copies.

Publicis Groupe’s UK revenue declined by 4.2 per cent in the first three months of 2015, despite overall revenues climbing 32 per cent following the Sapient acquisition. The owner of Saatchi & Saatchi and Starcom MediaVest Group reported revenues of €2.10 billion, up 31.7 per cent year on year. Read more at Campaign

The Advertising Association/Warc Expenditure report said adspend increased by 5.8 per cent in 2014 to £18.6 billion. The biggest increases in adspend came through digital, with internet advertising rising 15 per cent and mobile adspend climbing 58.9 per cent. For the full story read Brand Republic

Sky’s UK operation added 127,000 new customers in the company’s third quarter, a 41% increase year on year and the best rate of growth in 11 years for that three month period.  For the full story read The Guardian

Harte Hanks today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its B2B research businesses, Aberdeen Group and Harte Hanks Market Intelligence, to subsidiaries of Halyard Capital

The UK’s Official Charts Company has launched the country’s first weekly vinyl charts, responding to a resurgence in consumer demand for the old-school format. Vinyl sales last year hit their highest level in the UK in 20 years, with 1.29m LP records sold.

Easyfairs has announced the acquisition of Tank Storage Forum, as part of the company’s ongoing strategy to deepen its support of the bulk liquid storage market. The acquisition includes Tank World Expo, which takes place on 13-14 April 2015 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. The development follows the recent acquisition of Tank Storage magazine.

TES Global, the global digital education business, today announced the acquisition of online global higher education job network UniJobs

Three red-tops – the Sun, Daily Sport and Daily Record – all reported declines of more than 10%. The Mirror recorded a much smaller fall, down 6.74% to 897,786. Last month, the Mirror distributed 45,000 bulk copies to places such as airports, up from 42,000 the previous March.

Lynda.com, a California-based company, has created hundreds of thousands of video tutorials in multiple languages, helping people to learn “software, technology, creative and business skills to achieve personal and professional goals”.

Education is yet another industry being changed radically by digital methods. Just as with magazine media, the consumer has become even more powerful, determining what they need, and confident in being self-led through whatever course of instruction they desire.

A press release dated early March 15 from Inflexion Private Equity Partners announced an investment in Closer Still – a secondary buy-out from “…Pheonix with NVM valuing the business at US$100m” (comment by JEGI).  The text of the release said: Inflexion is pleased to announce that it has completed a Partnership Capital, minority investment, in […]

The sale price, revealed during Meredith’s earnings call today, is $60 million up front, with a profit sharing arrangement that will be paid out in Meredith’s fiscal 2018, estimated to be 3.5 times first-year cash flow. Also included in the deal are Shape’s digital assets, as well as the digital assets for Natural Health and […]

Vivendi, the owner of Universal Music Group and Canal Plus, this week entered exclusive talks with Orange to acquire a majority stake in Dailymotion, the online video site. The deal will be the first of many, Mr de Puyfontaine (Vivendi CEO) tells the Financial Times in an interview amid visits to Vivendi’s US-based shareholders. For the full […]

The first show under the new ownership is the UK Summer Motorhome and Caravan Show scheduled for The Kent Showground, Detling, on June 6 and 7. The other events now coming under Mortons’ banner are the UK Spring Motorhome and Caravan Show as well as the UK Autumn Motorhome and Caravan Show, both held at the […]

The Chelsea Magazine Company has acquired three specialist coffee-table consumer titles – The English Home, The English Garden and Discover Britain – from Archant Community Media for an undisclosed sum. Following its acquisition of Little Media in 2014, The Chelsea Magazine Company continues to expand its portfolio, which now includes 15 titles in three distinct groups – Parenting, […]

Advertisers splashed out a record £7.2bn on digital advertising last year (up 14% YoY) as they looked to tap into the growing number of digital consumers, with the average household now owning 7.4 internet devices. Video advertising spend rocketed 43% to £442m in 2014 – just five years ago this was £53m.Read more at Marketing Magazine

Airlines have taken a fundamentally different approach to their market. Rather than continue to battle one another to the bottom with discount pricing, the industry is now widely practicing what’s called “capacity discipline.” For the full story read FIPP

Haymarket Media, Inc, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Group DCA—an interactive digital communications agency specializing in multi-channel engagement of health care providers—from PDI Inc.

Rumours about a possible acquisition of Twitter have started surfacing yet again. Earlier this week, Twitter’s shares rose by up to 4.8% as rumours of Google and Yahoo planning a potential buyout started surfacing.