Private Equity Group Acquiring Deadspin Parent Wants to Target Marketers Seeking "Brand-Safe Content"

The Gizmodo Media Group is being sold by Univision to private equity group Great Hill Partners for an undisclosed amount, reports Benjamin Mullin of the Wall Street Journal. It is the latest chapter in the group of sites — including Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jezebel, and Kotaku — that were previously part of Gawker Media, and purchased by Univision in a bankruptcy auction in 2016 for $135 million.

The most curious portion of the WSJ story is this paragraph that discusses the plans of James Spanfeller, the new CEO of the media group who previously held high leadership roles at Forbes.com and the magazine and digital publisher Ziff Davis:

"Mr. Spanfeller hopes to bolster the company’s profit margins from automated or “programmatic” advertising sales, targeting marketers who are seeking brand-safe content and high-quality audiences that are difficult to find elsewhere, the person said."

These sites — and this also includes The Onion, which Univision acquired independently from the sites acquired in the Gawker auction — are by design not “brand safe”. They do reach very large audiences (67 million people combined in February, according to Comscore numbers cited in the WSJ story), but they are aggressive and irreverent in a way that big brands often find unpalatable.

Whether and to what extent this will manifest in a culture clash will be worth monitoring as this marriage goes forward.

UPDATE: Will this letter go over well with the staffs?