Digital media firm World of Good Manufacturers has offered off its three remaining properties—Effectively+Good, Livestrong, and Solely In Your State—and shuttered, in response to 4 folks acquainted with the scenario.
The majority of the workers, excluding some group members who moved with the respective manufacturers, had been laid off.
A spokesperson for its mother or father firm, Graham Holdings, confirmed the closures. The corporate declined to share how many individuals had been affected by the layoffs, although between 50 and 200 folks labored at World of Good Manufacturers, in response to LinkedIn.
“After a short transition of providers interval, World of Good Manufacturers will now not be a unit of Graham Holdings,” stated Sandy Stonesifer, vice chairman and chief human sources officer at Graham Holdings. “We want the entire manufacturers nicely of their new houses.”
The digital media firm Ziff Davis acquired the editorial manufacturers Effectively+Good and Livestrong on June 6. Ziff Davis, which is publicly owned, issued an announcement final week containing the information.
Its buy of Livestrong contains solely its content material belongings, which shall be redirected to manufacturers inside its On a regular basis Well being portfolio, in response to an individual acquainted with the deal. Because of this, there’ll now not be a Livestrong content material web site.
Phrases of the offers weren’t disclosed, outdoors of a notice that the value of the Effectively+Good acquisition was “not materials” to the Ziff Davis enterprise.
Graham Holdings offered the opposite title in its World of Good Manufacturers portfolio, Solely In Your State, to digital media firm Launch Potato in June. The phrases of that deal had been additionally not disclosed.
“Launch Potato is worked up to combine Solely In Your State into its portfolio of manufacturers,” stated founder Greg Van Horn.
Ziff Davis expands, Graham Holdings contracts
The acquisitions mark the newest in a interval of heightened dealmaking for Ziff Davis, which acquired CNET in October and theSkimm in March.
The closure of World of Good Manufacturers marks the tip of an extended, tumultuous saga for the corporate, which was initially conceived as Demand Media in 2006.
The corporate went public in 2011 after pioneering a technique of editorial manufacturing now referred to pejoratively as content material farming. Its techniques spurred Google to challenge an algorithm replace on the time to curtail the observe, successfully setting off the cat-and-mouse tactic of algorithmic gaming that may outline SEO methods for the subsequent decade.
Demand Media rebranded to Leaf Group in 2016, and it was acquired by Graham Holdings for $323 million in 2021. Graham Holdings, which additionally owns Slate and International Coverage, owned The Washington Submit for 80 years earlier than promoting it to Jeff Bezos in 2013.
The acquisition aged poorly, as ADWEEK completely reported on the time. In 2022, Graham Holdings chief govt and president Timothy O’Shaughnessy admitted as a lot in his shareholder letter.
“In brief, Leaf has underperformed our expectations and we overpaid,” O’Shaughnessy wrote. “I screwed this one up.”
Graham Holdings restructured Leaf Group in 2023, splitting it right into a market enterprise and a way of life publishing enterprise.
Leaf Group chief income officer Lindsey Abramo grew to become the CEO of the life-style publishing division, which was rebranded to World of Good Manufacturers. The division contained 4 manufacturers on the time: Effectively+Good, Solely In Your State, Livestrong, and Hunker, which generated about 37.5 million month-to-month distinctive guests, in response to Axios.
However the media properties continued to wrestle, and in December 2023 the workers of Hunker was laid off and the title was later offered to Static Media for an undisclosed value in 2024.
In Could, Abramo spoke with ADWEEK about her plans to revitalize the rest of the World of Good portfolio, infusing the Solely In Your State web site with synthetic intelligence and launching an experiential showroom for Effectively+Good. However by June, Graham Holdings offered off the remaining three manufacturers.
The dissolution of the World of Good Manufacturers portfolio mirrors the current unraveling of G/O Media, which additionally offered off its editorial division in components and closed its doorways in July.
The dual closures comes at a fittingly symbolic second. As AI reshapes the search panorama, the businesses that epitomized its earlier period are disappearing together with it.
