The acquisition of Morning Brew by Insider Inc. that we first
discussed two weeks ago is now
official, according to Axios:
Deal terms: The deal values Morning Brew at around $75 million, sources tell Axios.
The deal size raised some eyebrows as $75 seemed like a lot for a few newsletters. But I think Morning Brew is well worth it as the deal is not only about about the size of their audience but also its purchasing power.
In that sense the best comparison of the Morning Brew deal might be the
acquisition of SmartBrief, a business publisher with 275 newsletters in 14 industries. It was acquired by Future plc, a British magazine publisher, for $45 - $65 million back in 2019. According to FOLIO, the deals was both about the B2B audience and technology that Smartbrief had built:
In addition to strengthening its B2B capabilities, growing its footprint in the U.S. and shifting more of its revenues toward digital media—all central aspects of the company’s growth strategy under CEO Zillah Byng-Thorne—Future said it was attracted to SmartBrief’s proprietary technology, including its CMS, taxonomy search tool, ad server and newsletter tracking system, which it plans to apply to other areas of the company.
So clearly there is good money in business newsletters. And even though they don’t make the news that often, there are many successful ones.
One of the better known ones is
POLITICO Pro. Politico was founded in 2007 and a trendsetter in many ways. The founders left their jobs to start their own publication, and found success with newsletters, Politico Playbook in this case. POLITICO Pro was added in 2010 and provided a paid complement to the ad based consumer product.
INMA did an interesting
presentation about POLITICO Pro in 2018, demonstrating the enormous value of such an offering for professionals.
