Ladbible owner LBG Media has hailed a “transformational year” as direct revenue made up more than half of the total for the first time and a major US acquisition began to pay off.
Chief executive Solly Solomou told Press Gazette the company’s goal is to become a “global entertainment powerhouse” and that it made a “real step forward towards that” last year.
LBG, which also publishes brands including Sportbible, Unilad, Gaming Bible, Tyla and US brand Betches, has gone from being a £30m business in 2020 before it listed on the London Stock Exchange, to a £90m business today.
Total revenue in the nine months to 30 September 2024 was £64.9m. The nine-month period used in the results is due to a changing in the accounting year.
An unaudited comparison of the 12 months to 30 September 2024 with the same period the year before showed revenue growth of 22% to £86.2m.
Direct revenues (via content marketing services to brands and media agencies in which LBG Media has a direct relationship with the advertiser) now make up 51% of revenues (£34.4m in the nine months to 30 September). Indirect (revenue generated through social media revenue sharing or web programmatic) was 47% (£29.4m).
Solomou told Press Gazette that the almost 50/50 split “means that we’re not overly relying on one type of business if it doesn’t go as well, but equally it just provides a strong foundation to build on”.
As a further sign of diversification, in 2021 at the time of LBG Media’s IPO Facebook made up 37% of total revenue. That is now down to 23%.
Pre-tax profits were £12.1m in the nine-month period, with unaudited 12-month growth of 32%, while adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation) was £16.9m or up 16% on a 12-month basis.
LBG’s global audience grew by 19% year on year to 503 million, including 143 million in the US, of whom more than 70 million were described as Gen Z (those born between approximately 1997 and 2010).
Solomou said this has proved an opportunity to strengthen relationships with blue-chip advertisers like Google, Nike, Lloyds and Visa.
In addition the audience now has a 50/50 gender split following the acquisition of Betches.
LBG Media spent $24m to acquire US-based women’s media brand Betches in October 2023 and has since made “significant strides” in consolidating its operations in the States, sharing offices and reorganising sales teams.
Solomou said there is a “real opportunity to build up the momentum” in the US, noting its advertising market is eight times the size of the UK market. “We can see a clear path to growth there.”
LBG has set out a goal of reaching £200m in annual revenue but despite setting internal expectations it has not publicly shared a timeline for this – although Solomou told Press Gazette the aim was “as soon as possible”. However the company said it has a “clear line of sight” following a positive first quarter in the current financial year.
Solomou said the US “will play a big part” in that, as will continuing to grow the audience base and strategic relationships with major brands.
“When you compare us to some of the bigger players out in market, we’re still very small. There’s a lot of headroom to grow and build on the success that we’ve had there.”
Solomou also noted that LBG has a “strong cash balance to help us acquire as and how we need to” with £27.2m in the bank at the end of September.
“We’ve got a good M&A pipeline there, but we’re very picky, as we have been with Betches and also Unilad in the past. So a very exciting opportunity ahead towards that entertainment powerhouse status.”
Facebook changed its monetisation model last year to adapt to engagement on the platform increasingly being with short-form content, according to Solomou.
The company said this resulted in lower indirect revenues from social in July to September compared to the same period in 2023 but that they have now adapted and returned to “normalised levels” by the end of 2024.
“They were very clear in their communications with us and worked with us on that change,” Solomou said. “It makes a lot of sense if you think about it: if you try to put a 30-second ad against a 15-second piece of content, you’re going to lose users very quickly. They’re going to get fed up with it. So a big change for them was changing the economics and the way in which the platform monetises.”
Ladbible Group’s three-pillar editorial growth strategy
Ladbible Group director of editorial strategy Jon Birchall revealed annual revenue from the editorial business (programmatic advertising and direct campaigns including branded content on the owned and operated sites) has doubled within three years. Year-on-year it was up 53% last year compared to 2023.
Birchall, who joined the company in April 2022, said the strategy that has been in place for the past couple of years has three pillars: engage, identify and monetisation.
“Engage” means audience growth and scale, driven by “diversifying where the audience comes from and how audiences find us”. Birchall said traditionally Ladbible has been a “Facebook heavy publisher when it comes to what’s driven audience towards us” but that in the past year referrals have diversified, with particular growth through search.
Despite that, Facebook did still grow as a referral source in the past year despite many other publishers seeing a fall, Birchall added.
The second pillar, “identify”, is about ensuring “that not only are we reaching more people, but people are spending more time with us, have greater loyalty to our brands, when they do visit us they read multiple articles rather than one, and then bouncing”.
He said there had been a double-digit increases in both engaged time and scroll depth on articles last year.
The third pillar is monetisation, the area where Birchall said they have seen a “real significant step change, certainly over the last 12 months, but really as an extension of the work we’ve been doing for the last couple of years”.
This strategy has included a focus on brand-safe content with higher commercial potential and audiences with “high buying intent”. For example there has been “significant growth” on Gamingbible and the launch of Unilad Tech which have audiences that advertisers want to target.
Birchall added that this has been support by the adtech and product teams who have improved the on-site video offering and done a lot of work in the backend “which has meant that not only have we grown audience, but the value of our audience has considerably increased at the same time”.
Birchall is now hiring to expand the team of 80 journalists in London, Manchester and New York.
“A big part of us being in growth from a revenue perspective is being able to reinvest it into the journalism and into the content side of the business, which is always exciting.”
He added that the areas that will see investment are decided with those three pillars in mind: “where are the areas where we think there’s still scale to grow in the audience?
“Where do we think further investment in our existing brands would allow us to reach the same people, but have them come back more frequently? So then, we will probably go into more specialist niches in in certain areas… [and] how can we increase the value of each of those visits?”
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