The $1.5bn Meredith Corporation, the largest magazine publisher in the US, has acquired the SwearBy recommendation website. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
Meredith reaches 100m US women each month including 90% of millennials. SwearBy is a site where women share personal experience with products that they “swear by”. The deal is Meredith’s second affiliate-focused acquisition following its 2019 purchase of the PromoCodesForYou coupon aggregation service .
Meredith plans to develop SwearBy’s platform into a searchable website of recommendations where women can link with friendship groups as well as to e-commerce across beauty, style, parenting, lifestyle and entertainment. It will be integrated into all the company’s digital magazines: when People, for example, interviews a celebrity or reviews a new movie, readers’ recommendations will connect them to the SwearBy platform.
The deal represents further revenue diversification for Meredith but, it is claimed, will also enhance the publisher’s advertising sales by delivering insights and predictive analytics to clients. The publisher claims to have channelled over $1bn of e-commerce traffic to retail partners in 2019.
Meredith Corp (publisher of major brands including Better Homes & Gardens, People, Real Simple, InStyle, Shape, and AllRecipes) has encountered some problems in its digestion of Time Inc which it bought for $2.8bn in 2018. Its share price has fallen 40% in the past 12 months.
