paidContent - Cosmic: IDG and Ziff Davis Tie Up
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
This is as cosmic as it gets in the generally boring B2B publishing world: IDG and Ziff Davis have tied up, though the latter is in a very different incarnation than days of yore. IDG TechNetwork, the online ad network from IDG which has about 200 third-party publishers in it, will now sell ads on behalf of some of Ziff Davis Enterprise’s properties, including Developer Shed Network, a portfolio of sites aimed at the developer community. The partnership will likely extend to other partnerships, the companies said. This comes as ZDE recently poached some senior execs from IDG joining the company, including Matthew Sweeney, former CEO of the Computerworld and InfoWorld brands at IDG and Eric Lundquist, formerly Content Director, New Media at IDG.
ZDE was spun off the original Ziff Davis Media when it was acquired by PE firm Insight Venture Partners in 2007 for about $160 million. It then raised $20 million last year, but amidst the downturn, has done layoffs and a reorg since then. Just recently it announced that the company had restructured its debt, with an effort to “significantly reduce” the companys debt and improves its access to capital. Now word on whether it will rise more. Meanwhile, ZDE has threatened a renaming ever since it was spun off, but hasn’t yet gotten to and likely may not, consdiering the original ZD has been morphing itself into a much smaller digital entity as it sells and closes its print products.
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By Rafat Ali