“In the past 10 years, rather than buying What to Expect When You’re Expecting, the parenting community and the advice available to them has all gone online,” Rosenblum said. “Everybody who grew up online is now in their 30s or 40s, having kids and still online.”
By November 2022, a little more than a year after the acquisition, the four titles had generated a 58% increase in parent readers and had a cumulative social following of 41 million, according to the publisher. Its newsletter subscribers across the same portfolio grew 32% year over year, and earnings from the division accounted for 27% of its annual revenue.
CPG struggling
BDG generates between 85% to 90% of its revenue from advertising, which has left it particularly susceptible to vacillations in the market.
More specifically, the company divides its advertising business into two broad categories—luxury and fashion, and consumer packaged goods (CPG) and parenting—and the latter struggled in 2023, as ADWEEK has previously reported.
BDG titles that cater to luxury advertisers—such as Nylon, Bustle and W Magazine—have performed solidly and been buoyed by a robust live events business. But those in its parenting and consumer goods portfolio—such as Elite Daily, Scary Mommy and Fatherly—have performed poorly.
Additionally, the saturated nature of the CPG space has challenged BDG. The increasing dominance of retail media giants, particularly Walmart and Amazon, has also made CPG budgets more contested.
Longtime BDG chief revenue officer and president Jason Wagenheim left the company at the end of 2023, and the company has said previously that it plans to fill the role in the first quarter of the year.
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