Digital Publishing Reader Revenue
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Immediate Media posts record subscriptions, Twitter acquires Scroll, and more: The Media Roundup

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What next for Immediate Media?

We like to share good news here at Media Voices, so this look at Immediate Media and its strong foothold as it looks to take its next leap forward is right in our wheelhouse. Immediate’s financials for the past nine years show a company firmly in charge of the verticals in which it chooses to publish, and this is reflected in its circulation success over the course of 2020:

In a UK market still dominated by news-stand sales, Immediate has more posted subscriptions than anyone else: 1.1m which was 14% up. The ABC figures showed double-digit growth for Immediate’s food, gardening, and children’s brands including BBC Good Food, BBC Gardener’s World, and Frozen.

There are caveats, obviously. No publishing business is wholly sound when it’s exposed to print declines and digital uncertainty, but that subscription success and command of verticals demonstrate Immediate is probably poised to invest in a few more brand and product launches in the near future.

Twitter acquires distraction-free reading service Scroll to beef up its subscription product

So Twitter is acquiring Scroll. It’s a welcome sign for those of us looking forward to its subscription service, one that suggests Twitter is planning to make it extremely robust. Effectively subscribers will be able to use Scroll to easily read their articles from news outlets and from Twitter’s own newsletters product, Revue.

Why Verizon sold AOL and Yahoo for about 1% of their peak valuation

This potted history takes a look at how Yahoo and AOL – which were once valued at more than $125 billion and $200 billion – fell from grace. In light of their sale to Apollo Global Marketing, it’s worth taking a look at how these great monoliths of the Cretaceous internet lost their content mojo.

In Denver, civic-minded ‘Colorado Sun’ acquires suburban newspaper chain

Here’s a fun success story to end today’s roundup: a news site created by Denver journalists dismayed over slashing cuts by the Denver Post’s hedge fund owners are taking over 24 suburban papers.

This content originally appeared in The Media Roundup, a daily newsletter from Media Voices. Subscribe here: