Today's Media Trends is 1,672 words, a 6.5-minute read. Sign up here.
Situational awareness:
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Twitter has acquired Revue, a newsletter platform for writers and publishers.
Why it matters: The deal marks Twitter's first step into building out long-form content experiences on Twitter, and its first foray into subscription revenue.
Deal terms weren't disclosed. The five-year-old Dutch company has 6 employees and has raised only around $318,000, according to Crunchbase.
The big picture: There are numerous tech firms getting into the newsletter business, like Substack, TinyLetter, Lede, and Ghost, as well as several editorial publishers, like Patch and Forbes.
Between the lines: Some authors are figuring out they need more than an internet connection and writing ideas to build out their business, Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva writes.
Former President Trump was eclipsed in media attention last week by President Biden for the first time since Trump took office, according to viewership data on the internet, on social media and on cable news.
The big picture: With the exception of a departure-day rally before flying to Florida on Jan. 20, Trump has neither jumped on the airwaves nor put out messages through surrogates.
The bottom line: Inauguration Day was the inflection point in the country's attention budget.
Photo by Donato Sardella/WireImage
North Equity, a venture equity firm that acquires and invests in media brands, is acquiring Domino Media Group, the home magazine and digital company launched by Condé Nast in 2005. The deal is expected to close this week.
Why it matters: It's the latest example of a niche media brand being gobbled up and consolidated by a private equity firm. Private equity firms are typically interested in ways to better monetize a brand's value.
Details: Sources tell Axios that North Equity will be acquiring all of Domino Media's roughly 25 employees.
The big picture: North Equity has been quietly building up a strong portfolio of digital-first brands since it first acquired The Drive from Meredith in late 2018.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
The Washington Post will expand its performance software on Tuesday to add video to Zeus, its suite of ad placement and optimization tools.
Why it matters: The update brings The Post a step closer to an end-to-end platform for publishers and advertisers on the open web to compete for ad dollars with big tech firms like Google and Facebook.
Zeus now includes 4 components, which collectively allow publishers to sell ads, optimize their performance and measure it across one technology stack.
Be smart: Like Amazon, whose founder CEO owns the Washington Post, Zeus gets stronger as more publishers sign on, and collectively optimizes their ad performance based on shared insights.
The big picture: As technology has evolved, it's become hard for many publishers, especially small, independent or local publishers to keep up.
What's next: The Post will launch its full ad network in the second quarter of this year.
Photo: Getty Images
A slew of apps centered around audio are booming, pointing to the undeniable trend of audio messaging becoming a bigger part of social media and work amid the pandemic.
The big picture: The ubiquity of AirPods and other hands-free devices have made audio-first companies more attractive to venture capital.
What to watch: Several companies, like Resemble, are also working to crack the next frontier of audio — the conversion of text to voice.
The bottom line: "The intimacy of audio could be tailor-made for our shelter in place, contact-free lives," says John Lustyan, Founder & Managing Partner of illum, a media consultancy.
Taboola, the content recommendation company known best for the chum box ads at the bottom of publishers' websites, has agreed to merge with special purpose acquisition company, ION Acquisition Corp., and become a publicly-traded company.
By the numbers: The deal values Taboola at $2.6 billion. Taboola's last round of funding in 2015 valued the company at an estimated $1 billion.
Catch up quick: Taboola almost merged with chum box rival Outbrain last year, but the deal fell apart following pandemic-related headwinds and concerns that the merger would prompt regulatory concerns.
The big picture: Group Nine's SPAC is eyeing Buzzfeed as an acquisition, CNBC reports. Business Insider has a list of the 11 high-profile blank-check companies to watch in 2021.
The pandemic has taken a huge toll on the Pay-TV industry, and with the near-term future of live sports in question, there are no signs of it getting better in 2021.
The big picture: The fraught Pay-TV landscape is forcing some smaller, niche cable channels out of business altogether.
But it doesn't mean that the bundle is entirely dead.
Software firms that help other companies communicate are booming thanks to pandemic-driven remote-work.
The latest: Vimeo, the 16-year-old video service that started as a platform for indie filmmakers, has raised $300 million in equity from T Rowe Price and Oberndorf Enterprises at a valuation of over $5 billion, the company said Monday.
Why it matters: The company has nearly doubled its enterprise value in less than three months. Vimeo's parent IAC announced plans last year to spin off Vimeo early in the second quarter of 2021.
Newsweek's opinion page editor, Josh Hammer, consistently publishes op-eds slamming Big Tech and Google while remaining counsel at the Internet Accountability Project, a group partly funded by Oracle, Axios' Ashley Gold has learned.
Nearly every major media and entertainment company is pouring cash into new podcasts. Many of them aren't making big money — at least not yet.
Why it matters: Consumer adoption has outpaced monetization. Only a few big players make meaningful revenue from podcasts today, but that's expected to change as the industry matures.