Gary Vaynerchuk Acquires Women’s Publisher PureWow
Company will be part of larger editorial effort alongside ad agency VaynerMedia
Over the past few years, media companies ranging from BuzzFeed to Vice to the New York Times have expanded their in-house units that act like advertising agencies and work with big marketers.
Increasingly, agencies are counteracting and creating editorial properties of their own, reaching new audiences across social media platforms. Now one well-known agency entrepreneur, Gary Vaynerchuk, is outright acquiring a publisher: PureWow, a lifestyle digital media company focused on “upper” millennial and Gen-X women.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As part of the deal, Mr. Vaynerchuk is creating a new company, called The Gallery, which will house PureWow and seek to build out or acquire other media properties to target readers in different demographic groups.
PureWow Chief Executive Ryan Harwood will become CEO of The Gallery, which will act a sister company to digital agency VaynerMedia, Mr. Vaynerchuk said.
Mr. Vaynerchuk described the deal as a “foray at a major level into the media side” and that “the internet itself creates an infrastructure that allows people to be involved in a lot of things at once.”
The move comes as publishers – including the Time Inc., the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal – invest more resources into their “branded content” businesses, expanding into tasks traditionally performed by agencies, like research or creating ads that appear across the web. PureWow generates the lion’s share of its revenue from branded content and has produced work for marketers like Cover Girl, Olay and Cartier.
“It’s been very obvious that the BuzzFeeds and Vices of the world have been aggressively going at the creative agencies,” Mr. Vaynerchuk said.
With the growing importance of video for digital media publishers, Mr. Harwood said the deal allows PureWow – which has nearly 70 employees – to expand its video capabilities thanks to VaynerMedia’s equipment, studio and team of some 50 full-time video production staffers.
“That would have taken me two or three years and a big round of capital to build that. Overnight, my team gets to use those assets and create that much more content,” Mr. Harwood said.
Mr. Vaynerchuk is making the PureWow purchase along with RSE Ventures, a venture firm led by real estate developer and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross.
PureWow.com generated 8.7 million unique visitors in November, according to comScore. The publisher, which was founded in 2010, most recently raised $2.5 million in funding in 2015. Vayner/RSE, a fund launched by Messrs. Vaynerchuk and Ross, participated in that round.
PureWow’s other venture-capital investors included Galvanize, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Melo7 Tech Partners, Pilot Group and Pritzker Group Venture Capital.
Write to Steven Perlberg at steven.perlberg@wsj.com