Friday, November 6, 2015

Demand Media Sees Steep Drop In Content Revenues, Cuts Staff

Santa Monica-based Demand Media is continuing to see a steep drop in revenues from its content and media efforts, reporting Thursday afternoon that it had $15.9M in revenues from its Content & Media segments, compared with $33.6M in the same quarter in 2014. The company said the drop came due to traffic declines to eHow and lower ad monetization yields. Things looked far better on the other side of the company's business, at Society6, where marketplace revenues grew 63% year-over-year, with a rise to $12.6M in revenues. The company reported a total, Q3 revenue of $28.5M. Demand Media also revealed that it has realigned personnel, reduced headcount, and consolidated its offices in the third quarter--as well as selling what it says are "non-core media properties"--as an effort to improve the long term profitability of the company. No other details on that staff reduction were announced by the company. Demand Media has rumored to be looking to sell eHow and Cracked, two of the major remaining content properties it owns, as part of a broad retreat from the content business.

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