April 1, 2025 - News and Business Intelligence for B2B Media

Where content meets revenue: Strategies for success will mark new event

Content & Revenue Day 2025 on May 16 in NYC will give the Neal Awards the complementary event it has long deserved.

By Ronn Levine

There's a new event in town, and it's already the talk of the industry. SIIA Media’s Content & Revenue Day will take place on the morning of May 16 at the Yale Club in New York, co-located with the prestigious Jesse H. Neal Awards Luncheon that will follow.

The event will focus on the present and future profitability of B2B media brands and the true engine of sustainable revenue growth: content.

“At the end of the day, especially in the industry that we're in, our content is what brings our audiences back to us day in and day out,” said Amanda Landsaw, CMO of Endeavor Business Media. (Pictured below, Endeavor CEO Chris Ferrell stands right, with staff at last year's Neal Awards.)

For years, the gathering of B2B media C-suiters, business-unit leaders, marketers, and content producers at the Neal Awards has been a networking and celebratory extravaganza. But there has never been a corresponding event to take further advantage of all the “knowledge in the room.” That officially changes in 2025.

The Opening Keynote Panel will be The Journalism Advantage: How Content Experience Enhances CEO Performance, followed by these sessions: Using Data and Research as a Content and Revenue Driver; Hacks for Using AI to Transform Content Operations; and Content’s Essential Role in a Powerful Lead-gen Machine. All in all, it's a truly valued, synergistic addition on a totally vital subject.

Examples abound of content strategies leading to profit. Dan Fink, managing director of FT Specialist, told us last year about its “fastest growing product launch by dollar volume that we’ve had,” saying that “first and foremost, we always invest in producing excellent content.” The new Informa TechTarget has a publishing network of more than 220 digital editorial brands.

GovExec's George Jackson will be running that company's new content studio this year, saying, “It'll basically be a content center of excellence for the company.” Even when it comes to acquisitions, such as Crain Communications adding Hart Energy earlier this year, CEO KC Crain said it was about “providing readers and business partners alike even more ways to access this exclusive content...’’

See more information about this groundbreaking, inaugural event. Discounts apply to those attending both Content & Revenue Day and the Neal Awards—with all the amazing networking that will go along.

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Insights from Grimes, McGovern & Associates

M&A market staying strong with possible 150-175 bolt-on acquisitions thru 2029

by John McGovern

The year 2024 saw private-equity deal counts and total deal value rise by a double-digit percentage. With over $1 trillion in capital ready to deploy, expected regulatory relaxations, and market optimism, the outlook for PE deal-making seems bright. This is good news for independents wanting to exit in the next few years.

For the past 8-12 years, in the industries that GMA serves (media, events & info services), the deal flow has been remarkably consistent for both portfolio company investments and bolt-ons. Portfolio companies or platforms refer to the initial investment in a company by PE firms with a goal to grow the company through ‘bolt-on’ acquisitions—usually of independently-owned businesses.

PE firms are typically most active in looking for bolt-ons in the first 3-4 years of an investment in a portfolio company. Looking in four-year periods, we saw nearly the same number (12-13) of PE firms enter our spaces (through a portfolio company or platform investment) in 2013-16, 2017-20, and 2021-24, for a total of 36. Looking at the data this way also smooths out the effect of Covid.

In fact, 2020 was one of the best years with seven new portfolio companies/ platforms created. Half came after March 2020, and, yes, some of those had significant revenue from face-to-face events. Bolt-on activity tracks closely with new portfolio companies/platforms because of that general 3-4-year rule.

Given the historical data, the portfolio companies/platforms created in the 2017-20 period will contribute to another robust 150-175 bolt-ons for 2025-29. It could be as high as 175, given the likelihood that many will come on the market themselves and have new owners to start the bolt-on cycle again—aligned with their investment thesis for the next stage of growth.

Another positive sign is that of the available capital for bolt-on activity: $7 billion in dry powder for PE firms active in these industries. (Dry powder refers to uninvested capital or, in simpler words, unspent money in the piggy bank!) This does not include any of the recently added funds, which average around $800 million, that will be on hand once the initial investment is made.

And finally, 2025 is already on pace with 10 bolt-ons in Q1.

This thought-leadership report is powered by Grimes, McGovern & Associates, a leading lower middle-market Mergers & Acquisitions firm advising media, events, and information services businesses globally. See our transactions here.

CEIR’s Q4 2024 Index shows rebound for B2B exhibitions

The Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) announced last week that the U.S. B2B exhibition industry continued its rebound in Q4 of 2024. The Q4 CEIR Total Index—the measure of overall exhibition performance—registered just 4.4% below the same period in 2019, a marked improvement over the 10.9% shortfall in Q4 2023.

In fact, that Q4 Total Index score of 95.6% was the highest quarter since 2019 by more than three percentage points. And the cancellation rate for in-person events is down to just 0.3%.

“The robust performance across all four metrics in Q4 2024 demonstrates the remarkable resilience and ongoing recovery of the B2B exhibition industry,” added Marsha Flanagan, CEO and president of the International Association of Exhibitions and Events. “We are particularly encouraged to see exhibitor participation nearly matching pre-pandemic levels, with revenues close behind.”

In CEIR’s four-part formula, exhibitors have come back the strongest, just about matching its Q4 2019 level. But attendees have been the weakest part, a significant 12.9% short of its Q4 2019 level. It speaks to the need for exhibitors to meet its customers in person. The key for B2B media companies will now be to continue to offer the content and “experience”—a word most used by event leaders now—that attract attendees to travel to these events.

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