Minute Media’s Rich Routman explains how B2B tech is becoming a bigger part of the media company’s overall business

In its tenth year of being in business and after a string of publisher purchases — which have included The Players’ Tribune and FanSided — Minute Media made its first tech-centric acquisition in 2021 with the pickup of publishing tech platform Wazimo in November. The acquisition reflects how tech is becoming a bigger component of Minute Media’s overall business and how its B2B tech revenue is becoming interwoven with its advertising revenue

“The B2B side of our business, it’ll end up [in 2021 having accounted for] 60-ish percent of our revenue. It’s a big part of that business. We’re as much of a tech company as we are a publishing business,” Minute Media president Rich Routman said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast.

The lines between Minute Media’s tech and publishing businesses are even blurrier than that. That percentage of overall revenue represented by B2B actually includes advertising revenue. While Minute Media does some deals in which it licenses its technology to companies for a fee, it also structures deals to include an advertising revenue-share component, which can also result in Minute Media selling ads for its tech clients.

“As we become more flexible in our business model, the B2B revenues have grown significantly on the back of being B2B deals on a rev-share basis supported by advertising or B2B revenues on a license-fee basis. But the B2B business as a whole is larger than the [owned-and-operated] brands,” Routman said.