Ziff Davis, Inc., together with its subsidiaries (‘Ziff Davis’), focuses on digital media and internet company whose portfolio includes leading brands in technology, shopping, gaming and entertainment, health and wellness, connectivity, cybersecurity, and martech.
The company’s digital media businesses specialize in publishing and producing trusted editorial content and tools for users seeking information and advice relating to the technology, shopping, gaming and entertainment, and health and...
Ziff Davis, Inc., together with its subsidiaries (‘Ziff Davis’), focuses on digital media and internet company whose portfolio includes leading brands in technology, shopping, gaming and entertainment, health and wellness, connectivity, cybersecurity, and martech.
The company’s digital media businesses specialize in publishing and producing trusted editorial content and tools for users seeking information and advice relating to the technology, shopping, gaming and entertainment, and health and wellness markets, and offer services to consumers and businesses.
The company’s connectivity business develops actionable broadband network intelligence and insights through data collection and analysis, and delivers products and services that facilitate improvements in network performance to enterprises that provide or rely on broadband networks, including through the provision of hardware and software used for planning and assessing the performance of Wi-Fi networks.
The company’s cybersecurity and marketing technology business provides internet-delivered, cloud-based subscription and licensed services to consumers and businesses, including cybersecurity, privacy, and digital marketing tools.
Growth Strategy
In addition to growing the company’s business organically, it regularly acquires businesses to grow its customer bases, expand and diversify its service offerings, enhance its technologies, and enter into new markets. The company’s systemic and repeatable M&A process allows it to execute a large volume of M&A with velocity and conviction.
The company’s consolidated revenues are generated primarily from five lines of business: Technology & Shopping, Gaming & Entertainment, Health & Wellness (collectively, ‘Digital Media Businesses’), Connectivity, and Cybersecurity & Martech. The company’s Digital Media Businesses are driven primarily by advertising and performance marketing revenues and have relatively higher sales and marketing expenses. The company’s Connectivity and Cybersecurity & Martech businesses are driven primarily by subscription and licensing revenues, with relatively stable and predictable margins from quarter to quarter.
The primary types of revenues that the company generates are described below.
Advertising and Performance Marketing - The company sells online display and video advertising on its owned-and-operated websites and applications and on third-party sites. It has contractual arrangements with advertisers either directly or through agencies. The terms of these contracts specify the price of the advertising to be sold and the volume of advertisements that will be served over the course of a campaign. Additionally, the company has contractual arrangements with certain third-party websites and applications not owned by it, and third-party advertising networks to deliver online display and video advertising to their websites and applications, or to third-party sites. It generates leads for advertisers, including vendors of consumer health and wellness products, consumer packaged goods, and information technology services, through various marketing methods. The company also generates clicks to online merchants by listing products, deals, and discounts on its web properties, and earns a commission when customers ‘click-through’ the ad to make a purchase.
Subscription and Licensing - The company provides cloud-based subscription services and generates ‘fixed’ subscription revenues for customer subscriptions and, to a lesser extent, ‘variable’ usage revenues generated from actual usage by its subscribers. It offers subscription and licensing services to businesses, which offer up-to-date insights into global fixed broadband and mobile performance data, and it offers subscription packages to consumers through the Lose It! weight loss app and through Humble Bundle’s digital subscriptions and storefront for video games, ebooks, and software. The company also generates revenue from the sale of perpetual software licenses, related software support, and maintenance used in conjunction with software and other related services. It licenses its proprietary technology, data, and intellectual property to third parties for various purposes.
Other - Other revenues primarily include those from the sale of hardware used in conjunction with software, online course revenue, and game publishing revenue.
Technology and Shopping
Technology
The company’s technology platform includes online publishers, as well as tools and services tailored to consumers, professionals, and organizations looking for technological expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. The company’s technology brands include CNET, PCMag, Mashable, Lifehacker, Spiceworks, and ZDNET.
The company’s publishing brands (including CNET and PCMag) are online resources for laboratory-based product reviews, technology news, buying guides, and research papers. It operates one of the longest-running independent testing facilities for consumer technology products. Founded in 1984, the company’s lab produces unbiased technology product and service reviews, and PCMag’s ‘Editor’s Choice’ award is recognized globally as a trusted mark for buyers and sellers of technology products and services. The company’s technology publishing sites are also recognized as trusted global sources of stories for more than a dozen platforms, including Instagram, X, and Facebook.
CNET is a trusted digital media publication that provides expert information, hands-on lab testing, reviews, and analysis on consumer technologies, services, and trends, to help customers find exactly what they are looking for. For nearly 30 years, CNET has covered a wide range of topics, including consumer electronics, smart home, money, wellness, and more.
PCMag.com is an authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. For over 40 years, its expert analysis and practical solutions have helped consumers make better buying decisions and get more from technology.
Mashable is a trusted global media brand publishing premium content for individuals interested in technology and culture. Mashable produces stories for more than a dozen platforms, including Snapchat, X, and Facebook.
Lifehacker is a go-to source for tech help and life advice.
Spiceworks provides digital content for buyers of IT products and services, allowing IT vendors to identify, reach, and influence corporate IT decision-makers who are actively researching specific IT purchases.
ZDNET is a tech brand for professionals, covering the innovations, trends, and products that are shaping today and tomorrow. With pragmatic wisdom and real-world experience, ZDNET connects business audiences to a better future by turning disruption and confusion into opportunity.
Shopping
The properties in the company’s shopping platform seek to influence customer purchase decisions through the provision of authoritative content relating to products and services, as well as the presentation of savings and discount opportunities for consumer shopping audiences. The company also facilitates gift card processing, program management, and marketing programs specifically tailored to meet the needs of high-growth online and app-based brands.
The company’s flagship savings destination, RetailMeNot, seeks to influence consumer purchase decisions through savings and discount opportunities by connecting retail partners with national and international brands with consumer shopping audiences. RetailMeNot’s promotional media solutions include mobile coupons and codes, and cash back offers across web, app, and browser extensions.
Offers.com is a coupon and deals website featuring offers from more than 25,000 of the internet’s most popular stores and brands. Offers.com’s objective is to help consumers find the best deals on the web. Additionally, Offers.com employs a process to verify that its coupon codes work, saving consumers time and money.
The company’s event-based properties, BlackFriday.com, TheBlackFriday.com, BestBlackFriday.com, and DealsofAmerica.com are resources for shoppers to find the best deals and offers from retailers during the height of the holiday shopping season.
TDS Gift Cards helps clients provide a world-class omni-channel gift card or gift code program, which helps mitigate global payment challenges, drive incremental revenue, and increase customer acquisition.
Gaming & Entertainment
The company’s Gaming & Entertainment platform offers authoritative and engaging content covering video games, movies, anime, television, comics, technology, and more. It includes game tips, reviews, and insights, as well as a digital storefront and subscription service for video games, ebooks, and software.
IGN Entertainment is one of the world’s largest gaming and entertainment media platforms and the go-to destination for fans to explore and celebrate games, movies, TV, comics, and much more. Across its 16 digital properties, it reaches more than 440 million monthly users in over 100 countries and engages with 85 million fans on social media. Its media portfolio includes favorites, such as IGN, Eurogamer, Digital Foundry, Rock Paper Shotgun, and MapGenie, which serve as trusted services for millions of fans worldwide, delivering daily content to more than 30 platforms, including YouTube, TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, as well as connected TV platforms, such as Roku and Samsung.
Humble Bundle is a digital subscription and storefront offering video games, ebooks, and software, where customers can purchase monthly subscriptions, bundles, and individual products. At its core, Humble Bundle is committed to raising money for charity, with a portion of every sale contributing to charitable causes. Humble Bundle has been named to the 2024 Inc. Magazine Best in Business list. Inc. recognized Humble Bundle in three categories: Small and Mighty, Established Excellence (5–14 years in business), and e-commerce.
Health & Wellness
Everyday Health Group (‘EHG’) operates a portfolio of properties focused on driving better clinical and health outcomes through decision-making informed by highly relevant information, data, and analytics.
The EHG portfolio includes a collection of interactive tools and mobile applications that are designed to enable consumers to manage a broad array of health and wellness needs on a daily basis, including medical conditions, pregnancy, diet, and fitness. The EHG portfolio also includes educational and professional development services, news, and information for healthcare professionals to stay abreast of industry, legislative, regulatory, and continuing education developments across major medical specialties and therapeutic areas.
EHG is organized around three audiences: Health & Wellness Consumer, Health & Wellness Professional, and Health & Wellness Pregnancy & Parenting.
Health & Wellness Consumer
The company’s Health & Wellness Consumer platform includes consumer-focused health and wellness properties that provide digital content and information ranging from interactive guides, resource centers, special reports, community health tip sharing, newsletters, self-assessment tools, healthcare finders, e-courses, and lifestyle programs.
Everyday Health, the company’s flagship brand, features medically reviewed, award-winning editorial content designed to inspire and enable the active management of health and wellness daily. In addition to Everyday Health and other EHG-owned and operated consumer websites and applications, including DailyOM, Lose It, and Migraine Again, EHG provides advertisers access to the Everyday Health Trusted Care Access Portfolio (‘TCAP’) of digital health properties. TCAP features digital properties of two of the most world-renowned medical centers, to which Everyday Health holds exclusive advertising representation rights. Castle Connolly, a premier brand in healthcare provided research and rankings, publishes the renowned, peer-nominated Castle Connolly Top Doctors series.
Health & Wellness Professional
The company’s Health & Wellness Professional platform provides health and wellness digital content that is designed to enable healthcare professionals to stay abreast of clinical, industry, legislative, employment, and regulatory developments across most major medical specialties and therapeutic areas. The company’s flagship professional property, MedPage Today, delivers daily breaking medical news across major medical specialties and major public policy developments from Washington D.C. MedPage Today coordinates with leading researchers, clinicians, and academic medical centers to aid in gathering in-depth information for its coverage.
EHG offers accredited continuing medical education (‘CME’) and continuing education (‘CE’) programs to healthcare professionals through the company’s PRIME Education business. PRIME is nationally recognized for its research-informed approach to CME and CE programs across a wide range of therapeutic areas. In numerous peer-reviewed publications, PRIME has demonstrated the impact of its work through measurably improving healthcare outcomes.
The company’s Health eCareers business provides a digital portal to connect physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and certified registered nurse anesthetists with jobs in their medical specialties. Health eCareers contracts with thousands of healthcare employers across the United States and an exclusive network of healthcare associations and community partners seeking connections to qualified healthcare professionals to fill open positions.
Health & Wellness Pregnancy & Parenting
The company’s Health & Wellness Pregnancy & Parenting platform includes pregnancy and parenting properties delivering content via websites, mobile apps, and online communities to expectant and new parents. Its properties support millions of families across various global websites and mobile apps in seven different languages. The company’s BabyCenter brand is a leading global digital pregnancy and parenting resource delivered via websites, mobile apps, and online communities. The company’s Emma’s Diary brand provides expectant and new parents with information and support in the United Kingdom. The company also operates the digital properties for the What to Expect brand, a leading pregnancy and parenting media resource, based on the best-selling pregnancy book What to Expect When You’re Expecting by author Heidi Murkoff.
The company’s Health & Wellness Pregnancy & Parenting platform also includes Mom Media, a leading community for creators and parents alike and operators of the annual Mom 2.0 Summit. Mom Media connects brands with modern parents via its highly engaged community of over 13,500 parenting influencers.
Connectivity
The company’s Connectivity platform operates under the brand Ookla and includes several data and services businesses that sit at the center of the broadband ecosystem and are sources of information on internet connectivity and network performance, facilitating insights and decision-making relating to broadband networks.
Ookla provides customers with fixed broadband, mobile network, and Wi-Fi testing applications, analysis, and insights. Over eleven million daily tests are actively initiated by users using Speedtest. More than 50 billion tests have been completed to date. As a result of this capability and other solutions used to collect quality-of-experience data, Ookla provides comprehensive insights into worldwide internet performance and accessibility, of broadband, mobile, and Wi-Fi networks. Ookla solutions have been adopted by a significant number of internet service providers, mobile service providers, enterprise Wi-Fi systems integrators, and regulatory bodies worldwide. In addition to Speedtest, Ookla offers its customers actionable insights, solutions, and services under the Ekahau, Downdetector, and RootMetrics brands.
The company’s Ekahau products and services provide business solutions to design, optimize, and manage Wi-Fi, Private 4G, and Private 5G networks using specially developed hardware and software to meet the performance objectives of these networks.
Downdetector offers real-time status information and tracks outages for services and digital products that consumers and businesses use every day. Downdetector aims to track any service that its users consider vital to their everyday lives, including (but not limited to) internet providers, social media, web hosting platforms, applications of mobile service providers, airlines, banks, games, public transport systems, and other online services.
RootMetrics is an industry leader in the provision of drive testing solutions and performance benchmarking of mobile service providers in the United States and the United Kingdom, providing actionable insights on the quality, reliability, and performance of voice, messaging, and data services.
Cybersecurity & Martech
The company’s Cybersecurity & Martech business provides internet-delivered software-as-a-service (‘SaaS’) cloud-based offerings to consumers and businesses of all sizes to meet their communication, messaging, security, privacy, customer marketing, and other needs. The company’s Cybersecurity & Martech services represent a model for delivering and consuming real-time technology services, resources, and solutions over the internet. Their goal is to reduce or eliminate costs, increase sales, and enhance productivity, mobility, business continuity, privacy, and security.
The company markets its Cybersecurity & Martech offerings to a broad spectrum of prospective business customers, including sole proprietors and small to medium-sized businesses and enterprises. It also markets its Cybersecurity & Martech offerings to consumers. The company’s marketing efforts include enhancing brand awareness, utilizing online advertising, search engines, and affiliate programs, selling through both a telesales and direct sales force, and working with resellers and other channel partners. The company continuously seeks to extend the number of distribution channels through which it acquires paying customers and improves the cost and volume of customers obtained through its current channels.
The company’s Cybersecurity & Martech business operates as the VIPRE Security Group and the MOZ Group, respectively.
VIPRE Security Group
The VIPRE Security Group, whose cloud-based SaaS offerings include endpoint and email security, security awareness training, secure backup and file sharing, and virtual private network solutions. The company offers these services to consumers who are worried about their digital safety and security of personal information online, and to small businesses and mid-sized enterprises who want advanced cyber threat protection. The VIPRE Security Group offers its services under the following brands.
IPVanish offers one of the leading virtual private network services in the industry. Virtual private network services encrypt users’ data and activity on the internet, enabling users to browse the internet more securely and anonymously, and without restriction.
VIPRE software solutions are designed to protect people and businesses from costly and malicious cyber threats. VIPRE offerings include comprehensive endpoint and email security, along with threat intelligence for real-time malware analysis.
Inspired eLearning’s SaaS platform for cybersecurity awareness and compliance training helps enterprises protect their organizations by educating employees on how to reduce human-related cybersecurity and workplace incidents.
Livedrive provides online backup and synchronized storage features for professionals and individuals and is designed to allow customers with an internet connection to access their files from virtually anywhere at any time.
SugarSync provides online file backup, synchronization, and sharing of a customer’s documents, photos, music, and movies across a customer’s desktops, laptops, mobile, and other devices.
MOZ Group
The MOZ Group’s SaaS offerings include email marketing and delivery solutions, search engine optimization tools, and voice and text communication services. The company offers these services to sole proprietors, small businesses, and mid-sized enterprises, enabling them to connect directly with their customers and grow the revenue of their businesses. The MOZ Group offers its services under the following brands.
Campaigner, iContact, SMTP, Kickbox, and Full Contact provide email marketing solutions to help small, medium, and large businesses strengthen customer relationships and drive sales through professional email campaign creation, advanced list management, segmentation tools, verification tools, marketing automation, attribution reports, campaign tracking, and targeted email auto responders and workflows.
MOZ Pro, MOZ Local, and Stat Analytics offer search engine optimization services that are used to help understand and improve internet traffic, rankings, and visibility in search results.
eVoice is a virtual phone system that provides small and medium-sized businesses with on-demand voice communications services. These services also include advanced integrated voicemail for each extension.
Line2 is a cloud-based phone service, which allows users to add a second line to a mobile device. Line2 enables users to separate work and personal calls on a single device and includes standard phone service features, such as SMS, MMS, auto attendant, call routing, call forwarding, voicemail, call queue, and toll-free and vanity numbers.
Competition
Competition in the Technology & Shopping, Gaming & Entertainment, and Health & Wellness spaces is significant. Within these verticals, the company’s businesses compete with diversified internet and digital media companies like IAC, Future PLC, Red Ventures, Penske Media, Integrated Media, and Internet Brands, vertical-specific digital media companies like RVO Health, TechTarget, Vox Media, Centerfield, Doximity, and Fandom, and other large sellers of advertising products and solutions, including Alphabet, Meta, Snap, Twitch, and others.
Competition in the Connectivity space is diverse. In this space, the company’s business competes with Opensignal, Accenture, NetAlly, and IBWave, as well as others.
The company’s online cybersecurity solutions compete against providers of cybersecurity solutions and related software, such as Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, Proofpoint, Gen Digital Inc., Kape Technologies, KnowBe4, and Malwarebytes.
The company’s marketing technology solutions compete directly with various providers of search engine optimization technology and communication platforms that provide email and voice-related services to small and medium-sized businesses, including companies like SEMRush, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, and Dialpad. The company’s Cybersecurity & Martech business also competes against diversified and acquisitive vertical market software providers, like Constellation Software and Tyler Technologies.
Seasonality
Certain of the company’s revenues associated with its Digital Media Businesses are subject to seasonal fluctuations, and is generally higher during the fourth quarter holiday period due to increased retail activity. Certain of the company’s Cybersecurity & Martech revenues are impacted by the number of effective business days in a given period. The company traditionally experiences lower than average Cybersecurity & Martech usage and customer sign-ups in the fourth quarter (year ended December 31, 2024).
Patents and Proprietary Rights
The company owns and uses a number of trademarks in connection with its services, including word and/or logo trademarks for IGN, CNET, Everyday Health, BabyCenter, Humble Bundle, PCMag, Mashable, Ookla, Speedtest, and RetailMeNot, among others. The company holds numerous internet domain names, including ‘everydayhealth.com’, ‘retailmenot.com’, ‘pcmag.com’, ‘ign.com’, ‘speedtest.net’, ‘offers.com’, ‘humblebundle.com’, ‘mashable.com’, and ‘babycenter.com’, among others. The company has filed to protect its rights to its brands in certain alternative top-level domains, such as ‘.org’, ‘.net’, ‘.biz’, ‘.info’, and ‘.us’, among others.
Research and Development
The company’s research, development, and engineering expenditures were $67.4 million for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024.
Government Regulation
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’) and portions of the Communications Decency Act (‘CDA’) limit the liability of eligible online service providers for listing or linking to third-party websites that include materials that infringe copyrights or other rights of others, or hosting third-party content, and the company relies on these protections in conducting its business. The company is also subject to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (‘COPPA’), which imposes restrictions on the ability of online services to collect certain types of information from children under the age of 13. In addition, the Providing Resources, Officers, and Technology to Eradicate Cyber Threats to Our Children Act of 2008 (‘PROTECT Act’) requires the company to report evidence of violations of federal child pornography laws under certain circumstances, and there are state and international laws that impose similar requirements on it.
The company’s use of email, SMS, or phone calls as a significant means of communicating is subject to numerous laws and regulations worldwide, such as the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (the ‘CAN-SPAM Act’), the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (‘TCPA’), and their state and international equivalents.
The company’s healthcare-related offerings are in some cases subject to a variety of healthcare privacy laws and regulations at the federal, state, and international levels. For example, the Privacy Standards and Security Standards under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (‘HIPAA’) establish a set of basic national privacy and security standards for the protection of individually identifiable health information that the company must adhere to.
In connection with the company’s Cybersecurity & Martech business, it utilizes data transmissions over public telephone lines and other facilities provided by third-party carriers. These transmissions are subject to foreign and domestic laws, regulations, and requirements by the Federal Communications Commission, state public utility commissions, foreign governmental authorities, and industry trade associations, such as the CTIA.
History
The company was incorporated in 2014 as a Delaware corporation. It was formerly known as j2 Global, Inc. and changed its name to Ziff Davis, Inc. in 2021.
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