Daily Mail open to further acquisitions as it touts online video growth
Piers Morgan and Martin Clarke speaking at the Daily Mail presentations in New York
The Daily Mail has used its Newfronts presentation to signal it may look at more online acquisitions if they can be found “at the right price”.
Editor-in-chief Martin Clarke made the remarks during a question and answer session with US editor-at-large Pier Morgan where he was asked about 2015 acquisition of youth orientated website Elite Daily.
Responding to Morgan’s question about whether further acquisitions might be in the pipeline Clarke responded: “I wouldn’t rule out the acquisition of other properties, at the right price in the future”.
“Elite Daily has been a fantastic acquisition for us. We keep their editorial team separate but the audiences are massively complementary, with 87% non-overlap meaning we now reach one-in-two US millennials.”
The Daily Mail also used its presentation to promote its growth in online video with the publisher claiming more than 500% growth in the last 18 months on the back of social platforms like Snapchat and Facebook.
“(Video) has been a big project for us over the last six months or so,” said Clarke. “We have been doing more and more video, but we are not like some publishers who spend millions building studios and doing rolling news. We want to do more with incremental improvement and incremental content.
“We are finding lifehack videos have been among our most successful.”
Clarke noted how social platforms like Snapchat were increasingly important to reaching younger audiences but took aim at some publishers who he argued had become reliant on social giant Facebook for their revenues.
“Snapchat Discover is exposing our news and our content to a brand new audience and we love it,” said Clarke.
“We are not like some publishers where Facebook is our entire income and we couldn’t survive without them, but they are a very, very important partner.
“They are particularly important in video. Facebook has really doubled down on video both premium content and now live.”
