Aller sells platforms in Finland to a growing online platform company City Digital Group
The Finnish subsidiary of Aller Media, one of the biggest media companies in the Nordics, has sold some of it online platforms to a growing Finnish company City Digital Group. The acquisition includes a popular social media platform, Suomi24, which has over 2 million users a month, and a dating platform Treffit24.
For City Digital Group, the acquisition is a part of their wider growth strategy. The company’s long-term aim is to help 100 million users around the world find 100 million services and products every year through its different online platforms, which include, for example, a table booking service TableOnline, an online media City Magazine, a restaurant review service Eat.fi and an ad network Improve Media. The revenue for the media sales of Suomi24 and Treffit24 in 2018 was nearly 2 million euros, which is over 50% more than three years ago.
Ilkka Lavas, a serial entrepreneur and CEO of City Digital Group, says: “We acquired Suomi24 to get an even larger market share of digital media sales and to strengthen our position in the online dating market. After the acquisition, the Top 4 media houses in Finland by digital reach are Sanoma Alma Media, MTV and City Digital Group. We can utilize the growing user base to grow our own and our partners’ services.”
According to Lavas, focusing on online services has been a successful strategy: “The internet is only now in a stage where growth can really start. It took over 20 years before we were able to, for example, stream movies. There are many different areas in which digitalisation will rupture old power structures, and we are forerunners in that rupture.”
“Our recipe for growth is simple: we want to inspire people around the world to find new experiences. By combining different services we will reach an exponentially growing user base and inspire millions of people. Our target for the coming years is a hundred million users, to be exact.”
“In traditional media, revenues keep declining and media houses are being closed down. We’re going in the opposite direction. Platforms such as TableOnline and Suomi24 are growing. We are also excited about Suomi24 now having Finnish ownership, as it was previously owned by a Danish company. I believe it’s crucial to have online media platforms in Finnish hands, because if we only had to rely on the moderation of Facebook and Google, that might be a danger to our democracy.”
Photo of the CEO of Aller Media Oy Peter Lund and the CEO of City Digital Group, Ilkka Lavas
(free to use) :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8mg9639seygej9l/Myyj%C3%A4n%20toimitusjohtaja%20Peter%20Lund%20Allerilta%20ja%20Ostajan%20toimitusjohtaja%20Ilkka%20Lavas%20City%20Digital%20Groupilta%20.JPG?dl=0
For more information, please contact:
City Digital Group, CEO, Ilkka Lavas, ilkka.lavas@city.fi , +358 400 997 969
Aller Media, Communications Manager, Tea Teinilä, tea.teinila@aller.com , +358 405 460 522
Suomi24 background:
Suomi24, which was established in 1998, has been of the biggest media platforms in Finland for decades. Almost half of Finland’s population uses the service every month. There are over 11 million threads on the website on different topics ranging from everyday questions to peer support. A growing number of users come to Suomi24 to be entertained and find more information related to news and other current topics. The platform’s popular dating service, Treffit24, has 230,000 users every month and more than 2,000 Finns find love through the service every month.
City Digital Group background:
The story of City Digital started in 1986 when the City Magazine was founded. The iconic magazine’s original idea was to inspire people find great things, events and restaurants around the city and participate in building a better world. In 2012, Ilkka Lavas, a serial entrepreneur and an online technology pioneer Lavas acquired the company and its digital foundations were built rapidly. Yet the original mission has not changed. Ilkka’s role model is Barry Diller, whose InterActiveCorp in America has also developed online technologies and dating services. Barry Diller’s TripAdvisor and one TableOnline owned by the City Digital Group also recently announced a cooperation which enables online table booking through TripAdvisor’s website
(https://cityfamily.com/tripadvisor-com-and-tableonline-fi-on-co-operation-for-providing-table-reservations-to-finnish-restaurants/).
The world keeps changing, but certain things won’t. Advertisers need to communicate with consumers online. Consumers need to search for and find new things. Our job is to build online technologies that make finding those things easy.
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