Merging Happily Ever After: Defining Why Pointroll’s Marriage to Gannett Works
My last ADOTAS piece examined a cycle of consolidation in the rich media and digital marketing industries. If you read it, and you’ve followed our arena long enough, you would logically jump to two, sensible questions:
1. Wasn’t PointRoll purchased?
and/or
2. Isn’t PointRoll an example of consolidation that should be examined in light of the DoubleClick, MatchLogic, Yahoo! and Google examples mentioned?
The answer to both is yes. However, unlike most M&A in rich media, the marriage of PointRoll to Gannett has worked.
The Key to Any Successful Marriage: Having Your Own Space
To understand our partnership, you must understand us — Gannett and PointRoll — and why we chose each other.
Importantly, Gannett did not look to the purchase of PointRoll as a means to improve a technology offering or their digital endeavors. Rather, it saw PointRoll as a leader, working with more than half of Fortune 500 advertisers and more than 1000 agencies and advertisers each month.
Gannett is a very strategic conglomerate, diversifying its business through the addition of leading media companies. Through a roster of television, print, online classified destinations such as careerbuilder.com and even elevator media through Captivate, Gannett is focused on combining and leveraging its core strengths across all media and digital enterprises.
From PointRoll’s perspective, Gannett was a perfect match. In addition to its solid corporate trajectory, we sought — and were granted — operating autonomy as a wholly-owned independent subsidiary. We were not required to integrate with another platform, shift our operations, eliminate leadership or put an end to our irreverent marketing style to please a more conservative mate. Furthermore, we weren’t asked to build technologies or to work exclusively for Gannett, allowing us to remain publisher-agnostic and enabling us to grow our relationships with more than 3000 publishers and other media companies.
With Gannett’s full support (and without pressure from Wall Street, a buyout firm, or a venture capitalist group) we’ve maintained our original course and focus on leading the rich media industry while investing heavily in what made us so attractive in the first place — innovation. Instead of doing what’s best for a board or a VC, we do what’s best for the agencies, advertisers and publishers we’re fortunate to work with.
The Gannett and PointRoll Difference: Passion
In the Gannett and PointRoll union, we saw our respective passions as facilitating quality products and services for our clients and customers. For PointRoll, our differentiator was (and continues to be) our passion for people, process and performance. We recognized that the online channel was complimentary to all media, even as it grows into a global hub for brands and brand marketing. We saw ourselves — and our philosophy — in Gannett.
With more than 100 years of innovation and an unbreakable passion for communication (USA Today speaks volumes on both counts), Gannett stood out among our many suitors. This was reciprocal, as Gannett valued our dedication to innovation, our problem solving capacity and our strong commitment to serving our customers well in a burgeoning, ever-evolving market.
Reader Comments.
Chris,
Nicely written, and good principles that people can apply to marriage and business combinations. I am glad you see Gannett as such as good partner, and the honeymoon continues. Previously criticising everyone’s “marriage” as failures is however a bit arrogant, and maybe presumptous as you still are in your “early marriage”. (like newlyweds telling the oldies, or divorcees “how to do it right…ok 
Easy to point fingers, and give advice, when all is well with our relationships, but watch out ..weren’t you married to Doubleclick yourself a little while ago? Objective advice is hard when you have been a member of the family.
But good luck and do hope the honeymoon lasts a long time, we need models that succeed, in marriage and business.
John
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