Woven Digital

Woven Digital
Private
Industry
Founded 2010 (2010) in Los Angeles, US
Founders
  • Scott Grimes
  • Michael Laur
Headquarters Culver City, California, US
Key people
Brands UPROXX
BroBible
HitFix
Dime Magazine
Divisions Woven Studios
Website woven.com

Woven Digital is an American digital media company and publisher of news and entertainment sites, among which are UPROXX and BroBible.[1] Founded in 2010 by Scott Grimes and Michael Laur, Woven is headquartered in Culver City, California, with offices and production facilities in New York, Chicago and Austin. Woven works with advertisers including Boost Mobile, EA, SABMiller, Sony Pictures, FX, Comedy Central, AT&T, Anheuser Busch, Motorola, and Bacardi to create branded programming.[2] Mike Shields, writing for The Wall Street Journal, describes it as, "Think lots of edgy headlines, pictures of scantily clad women, and discussions on flirting, drinking, Star Wars and cleavage."[3]

Woven also develops scripted content through Woven Studio including web originals, long- and short-form series and films.[4] In August 2014, Woven partnered with Paramount Insurge and Russell Simmons to produce a movie about the popular hip hop website WorldStarHipHop.com.[5] In January 2015, Woven debuted Luminaries, an original video series featuring the stories of young inventors on UPROXX.[6]

History

In November 2012, Woven acquired BroBible and then acquired Guyism in May 2013.[7] In March 2014, former MySpace co-founder Colin Digiaro joined Woven as president.[8]

In April 2014, Woven acquired entertainment news site UPROXX.[8][9][10] Jarret Myer, co-founder of Rawkus Records and Big Frame, joined Woven as general manager of publishing.

In June 2014, Ben Blank was appointed as Chief Creative Officer to run Woven Studio.[11] Matthew Polesetsky serves as general counsel.[12]

In February 2015, Woven Digital was featured as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in Hollywood for “for helping brands speak a young man’s language.”[13]

In April 2016, It acquired HitFix.

Funding

Woven raised $5.5 million from angel investors including former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly and P.A. Semi and SiByte co-founder Leo Joseph.[14] The company raised an $18 million Series A financing led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) with participation from Advancit Capital, the San Francisco 49ers, United Talent Agency, senior partners from entertainment law firm Ziffren Brittenhanm LLP, MySpace and SGN co-founder Chris DeWolfe, Buddy Media co-founder Mike Lazerow, and former NBA players Baron Davis and Jermaine O'Neal.[4] The company noted that the raise would help it expand its video production dramatically and better compete in a media landscape where many of the other players, such as Vox Media, Vice.com, and BuzzFeed were raising substantially larger sums of money.[4][15]

Websites and reach

Woven owns news and culture website UPROXX, men's interest website BroBible, street culture site Animal, and a number of other smaller sites. Woven puts the websites it manages advertising for in six categories: news and culture, lifestyle, sports, music, gaming, and entertainment.[16]

According to ComScore data from December 2014, properties owned by Woven has 41.5 million monthly unique visitors in the United States.[4] The advertising network of websites controlled by Woven was reported to have over 85 million monthly unique visitors.[2] Woven Digital has considerably lower brand recognition compared to other media companies with comparable reach,[4][15] and this has been attributed to the company's strategy of not emphasizing the parent brand on individual websites owned.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Kozlowski, Lori (21 May 2014). "Woven: Creating A Digital Network For Young Men". Forbes.
  2. 1 2 3 Carney, Michael (13 August 2014). "With the attention of 85 million men per month, Woven is quietly building the next digital media giant". PandoDaily.
  3. ↑ Shields, Mike (12 December 2014). "CMO Today: The Year in Ad Tech Deals". The Wall Street Journal.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Peterson, Tim (11 December 2014). "Woven Raises $18 Million to Keep Pace With BuzzFeed, Vox, Vice: Publisher Plans to Grow Video Business to Account for 50% of Its Revenue". Advertising Age.
  5. ↑ Siegel, Tatiana (5 August 2014). "Paramount Insurge to Bring 'WorldStarHipHop' to Big Screen". The Hollywood Reporter.
  6. ↑ Gutelle, Sam (16 January 2015). "Uproxx Debuts 'Luminaries', Its First Original Web Series". Tubefilter.
  7. ↑ Horgan, Richard (3 May 2013). "LA's Woven Digital Acquires Guyism.com". FishbowlNY. Adweek Blog Network.
  8. 1 2 Shields, Mike (17 April 2014). "The Edgy Male-Targeted Digital Media Company Woven Acquires Uproxx". The Wall Street Journal.
  9. ↑ Spangler, Todd (17 April 2014). "Showbiz Site Uproxx Acquired by Guy-Focused Digital Media Firm Woven". Variety.
  10. ↑ Ha, Anthony (11 December 2014). "Woven Digital, Owner Of Uproxx And Brobible, Raises $18M". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 24, 2015.
  11. ↑ Jarvey, Natalie (23 June 2014). "Male-Focused Digital Media Firm Woven Expands Content Production With New Hire (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter.
  12. ↑ Warren, Zach (3 September 2014). "10 noteworthy in-house career moves". InsideCounsel.
  13. ↑ "The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies Of 2015 In Hollywood". Fast Company. 9 February 2015.
  14. ↑ "Woven Digital". CrunchBase.
  15. 1 2 Abbruzzese, Jason (11 December 2014). "Woven Digital, a quiet giant in online media, raises a cool $18 million". Mashable. Retrieved April 24, 2015.
  16. ↑ "Audience". Woven Digital. Retrieved April 24, 2015.
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