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Chief Revenue Officer for profitable American Publisher Gallery Media Group believes that the difference between publishers is just “really good” on TikTok and Instagram and actually builds brands there.
Gallery Media Group (GMG) owns women’s media title Purewow, which has its own website, and more than 50 social brands on social only over short-shaped video platforms TiktokThe Instagram and Youtube Shorts including @moms, @cocktails and @recipes. In total, it claims to reach more than 200 million consumers.
GMG has been profitable since 2011 and earned $ 50 million revenue 2024-first from advertising, followed by affiliate/e-commerce. This year is again expected to be a year of growth.
Chief Revenue Officer Chris Anthony told Press Gazette that the business has found success in working with major brands to create direct revenue opportunities rather than relying on the various revenue shares offered by the various platforms.
Purewow was launched 15 years ago by Ryan Harwood, now GMG -Handling Director. Anthony claimed that it is now “larger than all women’s lifestyle brands in space”.
Harwood sold the business to the contractor Gary Vaynerchuk in January 2017, which means that it is now part of Vaynerx. Anthony said that sales “gave us permission to think about other areas of the business we wanted to be in and think about how we should be developed to become a broader portfolio business”, which led to them building brands on social platforms.
One of GMG’s biggest brands is @ballplayers, focused on lifestyle outside the court and outside the field and culture for the WNBA, NBA and NFL players. It has 1.7 million followers on Tictok1.4 million on Instagram and 479,000 subscribers on Youtube. Another of its major brands, @cocktails, has 2.8 million on Instagram and 2.7 million on Tiktok.
Anthony said they are treated “as a media brand but everyone lives on social-first platforms” and that the business is “obsessed with the short-shaped video relationship”.
He claimed that GMG’s success differs from a publisher who says “we are really good” on different social platforms: “We have built brands there. We have built brands that are naturally built on Instagram, naturally built in Tiktok, In Youtube shorts. “
He said that many publishers have used their social accounts “as just a distribution platform and not actually as a platform for content creation” and is still too focused on driving traffic back to their websites.
In previous years he said, “we could use Facebook to do so, but we know that there is a reason why many of these platforms keep people involved there. You have to understand how to build the right experiences there, you have to occupy what are the functions on the platform? How do the algorithms serve the content? What are they some functions and cultural trends, and how do you land on them to create content?
“So it is a very nuanced strategy and I think we love the surral of our industry of art and science, but I think in social 1,000% you have to be a bit of both.”
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Last month noted As a publisher plans that Increase investments in short -shaped video platforms In 2025, but the “video does not naturally come to many print -based news rooms and short -shaped video remains difficult to make money, with little opportunity to drive traffic back to websites or apps”.
GMG’s social accounts are primarily to make money by advertising brand partnership: Create sponsored videos to go out on the accounts together with editorial content or distribute large brand’s assets within the portfolio.
Anthony said that there is a “simpler, more digestible” story to tell advertisers about Purewow, who uses industry data like Comscore to show how it stacks up with competitors.
But with the social first brands he continued, it is about “getting the market-and I think we are there now-to understand that these brands on social are as powerful as the Web 2.0 brands.
“The amount of consumer attention that people spend on their side, spends on their feed, how much time they spend with their favorite creator – that’s where the content and the consumer’s intention happen.
“So I think the old Legacy Publisher brands that reinforce their content on Instagram and Tiktok are fantastic, but I think it can really understand that audience and really be there and understand from a practitioner point of view has reasoned with clients.”
Anthony said this has given GMG an advantage: “I think if you look at ball players against an ESPN or a Bleacher report, you understand that Ballplayers have this creator -mind. They understand how to create content for that consumer today, whether it is Gen Z, Gen Alpha, Young Millennials through that sports lens about how people want to consume content.
“So I think the market finally understands that these are not just accounts. They are real media brands. “
In addition, Anthony said that since GMG is “so close to the consumer on these platforms, it only gives us so many insights to be able to build programs and partnership for customers externally, and it also provides incredible insight for our internal team of how it actually turns to Our .com brands to be more responsive to what happens in the culture? ”
These insights also mean that GMG can use its “social first sensitivity” to do service work for brands, including running Fortune 500 Brands’ Tiktok stands for them.
Anthony also suggested that publishers may be too slow to jump on trends because they would wait to rewrite them or take the time to figure it out. “When you build these brands that can play on social, are you part of it, right? You either help to do the cultural moment, or you are so close to it.
“We have done a lot of work. We have given these types of brands for brands and said, as, “Hello, this is exploding on social right now. Here is the opportunity to inject yourself into it ‘and give them this opportunity to be very quick and smooth about it. “
‘Entrepreneur’s spirit’ keeps gmg agile
In addition to this social practitioner, Anthony said that GMG’s “entrepreneurial spirit” is the other major thing that has helped it remain profitable for 13 years in the midst of a difficult digital media environment that has seen End of brands like Buzzfeed News and vice.com (Although the latter has resumed publication).
GMG employs about 200 people in the United States, a number that Anthony said has allowed it to remain smooth. He noted that consolidation throughout the media industry could be painted as a positive for advertisers but “with it comes with slowness.
“I think the bigger you get, the more complicated the business model becomes, you lose innovation. I think we have been able to keep this entrepreneurial spirit and constantly learn, constantly swing as fast as the industry, and even more important, as fast as the consumer does. “
The changed culture around social video has also helped, Anthony noted: Highly produced video “does not work for the consumer anymore” which means there is no need to gather photographers and videos for a photography that they may have done five to ten years ago .
Instead, videos tend to be prioritized to use simple platform features that “Green screen” effect on tiktok by a person who speaks to an article or a picture behind him.
Some media experts have claimed publishers has lost control of the reader relationship by relying too much on the platforms.
But Anthony said that a focus on short -shaped video rather than any special platform can help. He spoke shortly after the short-lived Tiktok ban in the United States, he said: “We believe that behavior is here to stay forever, that if Tiktok was closed tomorrow, consumers’ attention would move to another platform, but it would be very still permeated by short -shaped video. And that is really what we are looking for – we are looking for consumer behaviors.
“I think the platforms will constantly make changes, but it is really about how we can move quickly and adapt these changes. And again, I think making changes when you are a real practitioner of the platform is very different when it is only this peripheral part of your business. “
Similarly, media consultant Matthew Scott Goldstein Publisher: “Don’t wait for trends to solidify, be a trendsetter,” Note that although TikTok is prohibited in American use on short -shaped video will continue on other platforms.
E-commerce, experience marketing and influencer marketing
In addition to direct partnerships, GMG has a “significant” e-commerce income strategy. On purewow this is through Affiliate links on the site And IE mail messages, while it is at social, it is through the Tiktok store and Instagram stories. Anthony added that increased livestream shopping behavior is also expected to “open up a whole new arena from an affiliate viewing”.
In events, GMG launched an experience (a more engrossing type for brands to be involved in) Strand 2023 called Gallery House which has so far appeared at events such as Coachella, F1 Miami and Super Bowl.
Anthony said that “for a while we did events that were very responsive to what an advertiser wanted to do or what we wanted to do in a moment in time” and that experience can be difficult for brands to motivate the return on investment.
But they wanted to “reintroduce” it: “It is a space that we love, but it is a space that we have to work harder for marketers, especially when the fragmentation of dollars constantly hands-brands must be stricter and conservative about how they spend, but They still want to do cool things. ”
The idea behind the gallery houses is to “treat them almost like a production shooting” and utilize them as a background to create content so that brands can make the “social payload to be around a large cultural moment but be able to go away with an extreme amount of content that can drive other needs in the business outside that event ”.
“There is a lot of consumer’s attention but people do not have enough content to be able to post there. So this is a gap that we have been able to fill for brands and have only been extremely successful because we can really gather cultural moments that play a role at the same time As we solve a business challenge for brands.
GMG also has an influencer -marketing business through which the basement affects with the right demographic and the audience to work with brand campaigns. Anthony said this is “massively growing” in revenue.
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