Advertising news today: Media deals, Sir Martin Sorrell on ‘radical change’

Bustle
Digital Group

A lot of digital media companies are said to be looking for
buyers, facing the same pressures that forced Mic to sell at a
fire sale. But the Mic sale, combined with overall business
pressures, suggest they won’t get the price they hope for.

Once high-flying Mic raised $60 million to build a media company
to target millennials, but it sold
to Bustle Media Group for a reported $5 million. The
deal struck resemblance to another new-media darling Mashable
that sold at this time a year ago for about $40 million, one
fifth of its onetime value.

Now, the buzz is that other investor-backed companies such as
Refinery29, Vox Media, and Vice Media might look for an exit.
Refinery29 and Vice said they’re not for sale. Vox said it would
evaluate opportunities to “acquire or partner” with companies in
2019.

To read more about how Mic’s sale has the media business buzzing
with rumors of potential deals, click here.

In other news:

Sir Martin Sorrell says the advertising industry reminds
him of Burning Man, and should embrace ‘radical
change.’ The spirit of creative disruption that
characterizes Burning Man is akin to the changes sweeping through
the advertising industry today, Sir Martin Sorrell said at
Business Insider’s IGNITION Conference.

The president of media giant Turner says content is still
king, but television needs to evolve. David Levy
said television needs to be rethought as people increasingly view
shows on all kinds of devices, and that the AT&T-Time Warner
deal will help Turner better serve viewers with better ads, he
said.

‘We are trying to build that direct audience’: Reese
Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine is more focused on building
audiences than scale. Sarah Harden, president of
Reese Witherspoon’s media brand Hello Sunshine, also said it has
projects in the works for Apple, Hulu and Amazon.

‘The live TV market is robust’: Hulu CEO Randy Freer
talks about accelerating subscriber growth and profitability at
the company. Hulu will add more subscribers in the
second half of the year than it did in the first half, CEO Randy
Freer said at IGNITION.

Roku users are streaming nearly 3 hours a day on average,
and the most-searched term is for ‘free’ content.Roku executive
Scott Rosenberg was interviewed Tuesday at Business
Insider’s IGNITION
2018 conference about his role in driving the
company’s advertising revenue.

Blavity startup cofounder Aaron Samuels has raised $8.5 million
spoke at IGNITION about what he has to do to get his
company to the next step, and why he’s ‘terrified.’

‘We still need to make search and discovery much better:’
Etsy is banking on tech and marketing to catch up with
Amazon. 18 months since becoming Etsy’s CEO, Josh
Silverman has turned Etsy’s stock around by restructuring the
company and cutting departments like Etsy Studio, a 150-person
team that focused on craft supplies.

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg explains the company’s massive
reorganization. The company is now comprised of
Verizon Consumer Group, Verizon Business Group, and Verizon Media
Group.