Evolve Media has added to its growing portfolio of women and family-focused properties with the purchase of L.A.-based Total Beauty Media Group, including its flagship property TotalBeauty.com. A purchase price was not disclosed.
The purchase also includes the millennial-focused BeautyRiot.com, which offers tips and tricks from leading hairstylists, fashion stylists and makeup artists. It is Evolve’s third major acquisition in five months, following the purchase of Dogtime Media and AfterEllen.com.
The new properties will be housed in Evolve’s existing TotallyHer Media group, which also includes TheFashionSpot.com. Combined, TotalBeauty.com and TheFashionSpot.com reach approximately 644,000 monthly unique viewers in Canada, with a core audience of women 30-35.
Walder Amaya, Evolve’s Toronto-based executive vice-president of international sales and operations, said Evolve’s objective with the TotalBeauty.com purchase was to expand its reach in the core fashion/lifestyle vertical.
“We want to make sure we’re owning the verticals in which we operate,” he said. “TheFashionSpot.com and TotalBeauty.com are market leaders, and we believe the synergies between the two sites make them a force to be reckoned with, specifically against those endemic advertisers like the Unilevers and L’Oreal’s of the world.”
He said the company is currently looking at ways to “Canadianize” TotalBeauty.com’s offering. He said the company’s mandate over the next quarter is to localize content and offer advertising opportunities such as takeovers and content sponsorship.
Established in Los Angeles in 2007, TotalBeauty.com is a leading independent beauty publisher, with more than 263,000 monthly unique viewers in Canada according, to January comScore numbers.
The company first came up on Evolve’s radar 12 months ago, while conversations with founder Emrah Kovacoglu were held over approximately eight months. “We were competing with each other, so we looked at it as ‘How do we join forces to be able to command a larger share of those advertising budgets against beauty and style?’” said Amaya.
Amaya said Evolve remains in acquisition mode, with future purchases aligning with its objective to be a player in “enthusiast driven” content verticals. The company is in preliminary discussions with several other publishers, he said.
