UK B2B Publisher Bets On Advertising as its Primary Revenue Model

B2B publisher Astor Media made a splash in the spring with a flurry of media title acquisitions within the UK.

The new-on-the-scene publisher launched in 2022 alongside its first publication The Intermediary, which focuses on mortgage and specialist finance markets.

“Our process is that we like to be editorially-led rather than an events business,” Ryan Fowler, managing director of Astor Media, told AMO.

The meaning of being editorially-led at Astor Media has evolved in the few years since its founding. Initially the strategy was to spin-off new titles focused on areas related to the founding team’s experience, which includes finance and human resources. The launch of Workplace Journal, a HR-focused publication, followed the launch of The Intermediary two years later.

Last year marked a turning point for the publisher as it became aggressive in acquisitions, recognizing there was an opportunity to revitalize niche B2B media brands rather than try to launch new ones in already “crowded” markets.

The Aggressive Acquirer

“What we try to look for is brands that have latent potential,” Fowler said. “Brands that have maybe been left to stagnate [and] probably haven’t been given all the love and attention that they need. What we want to do is find those brands and then really push them on.”

In March, Astor Media expanded its coverage into the automotive industry acquiring a portfolio of titles including Business Motoring, Business Vans, Motor Trade News, and Leasing Broker News.

“Pretty much every one of them has over 20 years of pedigree in the space, they used to be relatively large publications. In recent years, they’ve not grown as they could,” Fowler said. “We think by implementing new technology, new ways of doing stuff, increasing distribution channels, we can really reinvigorate them.”

Not long after acquiring the automotive titles, Astor Media acquired Touring.co.uk, a consumer-facing publication that serves UK audiences interested in motorhomes, caravans and camping. While consumer is a “completely different market,” a title such as Touring.co.uk fits with Astor Media’s focus on catering to “niche” interests. There’s also the natural synergies between Touring.co.uk and the other automotive titles, Fowler said.

Fowler declined to disclose the financial details of the acquisitions. He described the strategy “as acquiring underinvested brands with clear operational and editorial upside while not overpaying for legacy traffic or brand equity.” With each acquisition it is about ensuring the publication is running in a way that is sustainable and can also gain momentum all though leveraging technology, cleaning up processes and running operations as lean as possible, Fowler said.

But what happens when these titles have gained momentum? Fowler says he won’t be taking a private equity approach of adding value then trying to ship those titles off to another company. The intention is to continue to manage the titles, he said. No external capital was raised to set up Astor Media and it has been designed to operate “leanly and sustainably” from the outset, Fowler said. The company has three active directors.

As Astor Media is a private company and considered a “micro-company,” there’s sparse details on its financials. Recent unaudited accounts on Companies House show that the firm had capital and reserves of -£16,645 (-$22,310), which refers to the company’s share capital plus any accumulated profit or losses, for the year ended Dec. 31, 2024.

“What we do with our revenues we tend to reinvest,” Fowler said. “Because we don’t have VC backing or have got a lot of directors who are waiting to get paid out, we are able to invest in stuff like editorial, like technology and push brands, which again is something that I think makes us stand out.

I don’t think there’s a massive investment going on in the space at the moment.”

A Contrarian View 

Revenue comes predominantly from advertising across titles and Fowler sees no reason for that to change.

“In the markets that we operate at the moment, it’s my personal belief and also the belief in our senior management that a lot of these markets are saturated with events,” he said.

“We don’t want to be an events business,” he added. “We want to run trade publications, successful trade publications. That’s not to say we won’t run events if there’s a gap in the market. We run an event over on the mortgage side and it’s the only event in its type—it’s awards for secured loans. No one else does that, that part of the market is completely underserved. We did that in collaboration with the industry—the industry approached us.”

And while there could be the potential for gating off some content as a way to gain access to audience insights, Fowler doesn’t believe within the small niches that they are targeting that there would be enough to carry a subscription model.

“The traffic we have gives us the ability to get good returns on advertising for our clients,” Fowler said.

Astor Media reports that The Intermediary had its strongest-ever month for commercial revenue in April, with a 40% increase in advertising bookings compared to the previous year. Advertisements can be seen lining both the left and right hand columns of the site as well as being interspersed within the content.

And though Astor Media leans into having a technology-driven approach, it’s also not afraid to be old school when needed. Two years ago, it launched a print version of The Intermediary based on reader demand and now has over 4,000 subscribers mostly through organic growth, Fowler said. While it is still cleaning up its email distribution list for its auto division as a whole, it’s currently at just short of 100,000.

The priority for Astor Media for the rest of the year is to continue with building activities despite actively being in conversations with firms, even as recently as last week, and having a callout that sits at the top of its site saying, “Selling a media business?”

“If we were to do another acquisition this year it has to be a good fit and have a compelling lead-in for us to do it,” Fowler said.