Ziff Davis Buys Four Brands From Recurrent Ventures, Launches a Lifestyle Group

The digital media company Ziff Davis acquired four media brands from Recurrent Ventures on Friday, picking up the home titles Dwell, Domino, and Business of Home, along with the science publisher PopSci.

The three home brands will form the basis of a new lifestyle group within Ziff Davis, led by Business of Home founder Julia Noran Johnston, according to the company. PopSci will join the company’s technology division, slotting in alongside CNET, Mashable, PCMag, and Lifehacker. All staff at the four titles will be retained.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ziff Davis, a publicly traded company, reports its quarterly earnings on Friday, although any acquisition that costs less than $134 million does not need to be recorded. One M&A executive familiar with the sector estimated the price of the deal at less than $20 million. 

The acquisition extends a roll-up strategy that has made Ziff Davis among the most active buyers in digital media at a moment when most strategic acquirers have largely retreated. 

The company purchased Lifehacker from G/O Media in 2023, CNET from Red Ventures for more than $100 million in 2024, and theSkimm in March 2025. It also has the cash to keep going: In March, Ziff Davis sold its Connectivity division to Accenture for $1.2 billion.

The lifestyle group is a new vertical for Ziff Davis, whose portfolio has historically skewed toward male audiences in technology, gaming, and shopping. 

The home brands will serve as the foundation for a broader push into categories where the company has little or no presence, including food, decor, fitness, fashion, and beauty, according to a person familiar with the strategy. This expansion will also be led by Johnston. 

The rationale behind the purchase rests on the thesis that, as artificial intelligence floods the internet with synthetic content, audiences will place more value on trusted brands with established editorial voices. Dwell, Domino, and Business of Home have cultivated loyal followings in the design and architecture space, while PopSci, founded in 1872, is one of the oldest continuously running editorial outlets in the U.S.

That conviction in the utility of brand has made the company a willing buyer for properties shed by portfolios in retreat. Lifehacker came out of a shrinking G/O Media, CNET from a Red Ventures retrenchment, and now the four brands from a winnowing Recurrent.

For Recurrent, the sale represents the latest step in a years-long contraction. 

.newsletter-subscription-form-wrapper p:empty{ display: none !important } .newsletter-subscription-form-wrapper button br{ display: none !important }

The company raised $300 million from Blackstone in May 2022 to fund acquisitions, but the financing became an albatross as the ad market deteriorated and the private equity firm gained effective veto power over new deals, as ADWEEK previously reported. Since then, Recurrent has shed Mel Magazine, Saveur, and Field & Stream, cycled through multiple chief executives, and laid off scores of staff.

According to a person familiar with the matter, Recurrent had sought a buyer for the home brands for years before the Ziff Davis deal closed.

CEO Andrew Perlman framed the divestiture as a strategic narrowing rather than a reluctant sale. 

The home titles and PopSci, he said, served different demographics and advertisers than Recurrent’s core military and auto holdings, and the company lacked the events and video infrastructure to fully support them. 

Recurrent’s retained portfolio includes the military brands Task & Purpose, We Are the Mighty, The War Zone, and Military Spouse, along with the Military Influencer Conference; the auto titles Donut, Real Mechanic, and The Drive; and Outdoor Life, Bob Vila, and Futurism.

The transaction leaves Recurrent with a tighter, more thematically coherent portfolio and Ziff Davis with a new front to expand on, in a part of the media business most of its peers have abandoned 

Whether Ziff Davis can build a lifestyle group of meaningful scale around the three home brands will depend on what comes next. According to the person familiar with the strategy, Johnston has been given a mandate to keep buying.