The 93-year-old publisher Newsweek has acquired the adtech firm Adprime, a demand-side platform focused on healthcare marketers, to strengthen its health vertical and deepen ad offerings. Financial details were not disclosed.
Last year, Adprime generated more than $10 million in revenue with a roughly 10-person U.S. team and an outsourced technical workforce, according to Newsweek chief executive Dev Pragad.
The valuation was based on net income, and the publisher did not raise outside capital or dilute equity to finance the deal.
“This is a growth signal—for us, for the category, and for the market at large,” said Pragad. “We are building a health vertical that spans editorial, rankings, events, subscriptions, and now, advertising.”
A strategic outlier
The deal sets Newsweek apart from its peers in two key ways.
First, while Yahoo, Vox Media, and The Washington Post have in recent years divested or wound down their adtech assets, Newsweek is moving in the opposite direction: buying a DSP, private exchange, and first-party data platform all in one.
While some publishers have struggled to effectively operate adtech operations, Adprime is a small firm and one that fits neatly into a preexisting framework. Still, how well Newsweek is able to manage its demand-side business—especially in channels like CTV and with third-party inventory—remains to be seen.
“We spent a lot of time assessing whether this could be a distraction,” Pragad said. “But ultimately, it complements our rankings, deepens our advertiser relationships, and fits directly into our vertical strategy.”
More broadly, the media M&A landscape this year has been dominated by defensive sales, distressed deals, and portfolio streamlining, according to Blake Saunders, managing director at Methuselah Advisors. Newsweek’s acquisition stands out as an offensive move—a bid to deepen advertiser relationships in a growing sector while expanding the scope of its business model.
“This is one of the few genuinely strategic deals I’ve seen in the last year in publishing,” Saunders said. “They’re not just buying adtech infrastructure—they’re buying direct advertiser relationships in a category where spending keeps growing.”