Demand Media, the company pursuing the audacious strategy of buying up a bunch of generic Web sites that have no staff generating real content of their own — to throw advertising on them — has raised another $100 million.
In May, we reported it raised its first $120 million. Lately, though, the company appears to be buying content as well, including acquring Hillclimb Media, a producer of niche web sites.
The chief executive is Richard Rosenblatt, the former chairman of the company that ran MySpace. No doubt he has grand expectations; nothing to lose from swinging for the fences. Among the half-dozen acquisitions in recent months, Demand Media also acquired eNom, which claims to be the second largest domain name registrar.
The financing was co-led by 3i, a London based public venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley, and Oak Investment Partners. Spectrum Equity Investors also participated in this round.
Rosenblatt is also chair of an Arizona search engine marketing company, called iCrossing. There too, he has received lots of cash ($15M) from Oak.
Brad Greenspan, a former chief executive of the company that ran MySpace, has been just as active, if not more so.
4 Comments
-
Leah said:
Maybe he’s going to buy back Intermix!
-
Alex said:
Great! More trash for the internet! This guy has made quite the career of cluttering up people’s lives…intermix spam, and now $100M worth of spam blogs…this is awesome news
-
John Pico said:
It seems these guys are shopping spree. My site is available for sale ….www.411words.com :)
-
Joe B.S. said:
I wonder what will be the next step of Demand Media. FlashGames.com remains undeveloped and so I’m not sure what is the purpose of buying other websites with the same quality.
5 Trackbacks
8:58 am
VentureBeat Wire » Demand Media raises $100M for Web site land grab said:
[...] See our story here. VentureBeat Community [...]
12:06 am
FlatEarthVentures.com » I’m just shaking my head said:
[...] “Demand Media raises $100M for Web site land grab” Demand Media, the company pursuing the audacious strategy of buying up a bunch of generic Web sites that have no staff generating real content of their own — to throw advertising on them — has raised another $100 million. [...]
12:26 pm
Respectance.com » 2006 » September » 29 said:
[...] (VentureBeat) Demand Media, the company pursuing the audacious strategy of buying up a bunch of generic Web sites that have no staff generating real content of their own — to throw advertising on them — has raised another $100 million. More… [...]
8:04 pm
VentureBeat » Demand Media raises $100M more for domain name land grab said:
[...] the company is developing its web properties into more full-fleshed destinations. Last year, Demand acquired HillClimb Media, which produces web [...]
2:26 pm
Demand Media plucks Pluck for $75 million » VentureBeat said:
[...] 2006, Demand has raised over $350 million in equity capital. We covered some of those huge rounds here and here. Tagged N/A VentureBeat [...]