Demand Media: This Online Pied Piper Draws Large Audiences Using a Disruptive Publishing Model

Author: Chuck Richard, Vice President & Lead Analyst

Demand Media has grown from a start-up to a firm with annual revenue of $225 million in under three years. Its success challenges B2B publishers to ask, “What are they doing right?” and “What aspects of their model should we adopt?” The disruptive business model that Demand Media applies uniformly to both its B2B and B2C sites is powerfully instructive and sets a new standard and lofty benchmarks for solving the problems vexing B2B trade publishers in audience development, organization, and staffing. Demand Media provides a dramatic alternative and potentially threatening model for B2B trade publishers. This is the fourth in our “New Face of Publishing” series featuring disruptive companies; previous reports covered TechTarget, AllBusiness, and ECNext’s Manta. This report contains:

- Company highlights, including revenue, acquisitions, and product overview;
- A table detailing Demand Media’s portfolio of websites;
- Details of the competitive landscape, including competitors, opportunities, and threats;
- Analysis of the factors that make Demand Media unique, including its disruptive audience development model and operational and staffing model;
- Essential actions for publishers and information providers.