Ziff Davis is buying CNET for just $100 million

Red Ventures is selling CNET to Ziff Davis, the integer media and net institution that owns different notable tech publications similar Mashable, IGN, and Lifehacker. Ziff Davis’s main executive, Vivek Shah, confirmed the acquisition to The New York Times connected Tuesday.

Ironically, backmost successful 2000 it was CNET Networks Inc that paid $1.6 billion to get the past tech-publishing behemoth Ziff-Davis Inc and its online services institution ZDNet. Though truthful overmuch has happened successful the past 2 decades successful the signifier of divestments and realignments that today’s inverted acquisition isn’t arsenic ouroboric arsenic it mightiness seem. In 2020, Red Ventures acquired CNET on with a fewer different smaller properties for $500 million.

While an authoritative fig hasn’t been announced, Ziff Davis reportedly paid “more than $100 cardinal for CNET” according to the NYT’s sources — a fraction of the $1.8 cardinal it was valued astatine erstwhile CBS acquired the institution successful 2008. In January, Axios reported that Red Ventures was buying CNET astir for a buyer.

CNET has struggled with its representation of late. Investigations by The Verge and Futurism successful 2023 recovered that the website was utilizing generative AI to nutrient immoderate of its articles. Turmoil and layoffs followed but that hasn’t dissuaded Ziff Davis from the purchase. According to The New York Times, Shah wants CNET due to the fact that it’s a “well-known manufacture brand” and inactive has an assemblage that’s ample capable to beryllium charismatic to tech advertisers. “I person a precise wide and optimistic presumption connected content,” said Shah. The enforcement makes nary notation of however AI mightiness origin into CNET’s aboriginal publishing strategy.