Ziff Davis

• 1. A Company Older Than Television

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  Ziff Davis traces its roots to 1920, when William B. Ziff opened a Chicago advertising agency that placed ads for national brands like Procter and Gamble in African American weekly newspapers. That was the starting point for one of the most shape-shifting media companies in American history. In 1927, Ziff launched Popular Aviation, a magazine that would grow to 100,000 readers by 1929. That same year, a young man named Bernard George Davis walked out of the University of Pittsburgh and into a job as its editor. Together, they gave the company its hyphenated name and a trajectory that no one at the time could have predicted. The company that started with flight manuals and hobbyist fare would one day own IGN, CNET, Mashable, and the speed-testing tool that hundreds of millions of people use every year.

• 2. Pulps, Comics, and Science Fiction

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  By 1938, Ziff-Davis had moved well beyond aviation. In early 1938, the company acquired Radio News and Amazing Stories, two magazines that had originated under publisher Hugo Gernsback before Gernsback's own company went bankrupt in 1929. Both titles had fallen into decline in the intervening years; Ziff-Davis revived them starting with the April 1938 issues. Amazing Stories was a leading science fiction magazine, and the company soon launched a companion title, Fantastic Adventures. In 1954, Fantastic Adventures was merged into the newer Fantastic, which had been founded in 1952. Ziff-Davis kept publishing Amazing and Fantastic until 1965.

  The company also entered the comic book business in the early 1950s under both the Ziff-Davis name and the imprint Approved Comics. Rather than superheroes, they published horror, crime, sports, romance, and Western titles. Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel served as art director of the comics line. Other contributors included John Buscema, Bob Haney, and Mike Sekowsky. In 1953, the company sold most of its comics to St. John Publications, including the romance titles Cinderella Love and Romantic Love, the Western Kid Cowboy, and Wild Boy of the Congo. One title, G.I. Joe, continued under Ziff-Davis until 1957, completing 51 issues total.

  The death of Bill Ziff Sr. in 1953 brought his son, William B. Ziff Jr., back from Germany to lead the company. His approach to publishing would prove to be a significant departure from the pulp and fiction era.

• 3. The Enthusiast Magazine Era

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  Under sole owner William B. Ziff Jr., described as a polymath with a photographic memory, the company shifted decisively toward enthusiast magazines. From 1958 onward, Ziff-Davis built a portfolio aimed at hobbyists and the purchasing agents, called brand specifiers, who influenced corporate buying decisions. This dual-audience strategy attracted advertising revenue that general-interest magazines were losing. The company acquired Car and Driver and launched HiFi and Music Review, which eventually evolved into Stereo Review. It also built a presence in photography and boating publications. Bernard Davis, meanwhile, had sold his stake in 1958 to found his own Davis Publications, Inc., though the Ziff-Davis name persisted.

  The 1970s and 1980s brought a surge as electronics and personal computing captured public attention. Ziff Davis became the dominant technology magazine publisher in the country, with titles including PC Magazine, Popular Electronics, and Computer Shopper. In 1984, the company sold most of its consumer magazines to CBS and its trade titles to News Corporation, keeping its computer publications. That decision defined Ziff Davis's identity for the next two decades.

  In 1979, Ziff Davis had briefly expanded into broadcasting by acquiring television stations originally owned by greeting card company Rust Craft. The stations included NBC affiliates WROC-TV in Rochester, New York and WRCB-TV in Chattanooga, Tennessee, along with CBS and ABC affiliates in Michigan, Georgia, Ohio, and Florida. All were sold by the mid-1980s.

• 4. From Print to Pixels

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  Ziff Davis's pivot to the internet began in 1991, when the company launched ZiffNet, a subscription service providing computing information through CompuServe. That service grew into ZDNet, a news website launched in late 1994. The company also acquired PC Magazine in 1982 and the trade journal MacWEEK in 1988, giving it firm footing as the personal computing boom expanded.

  On the 20th of August 1994, Ziff-Davis entered television production with The Personal Computing Show, a Saturday morning program that aired on CNBC, America's Talking, and the Jones Computing Network. Co-hosted by Jim Louderback and Gina Smith, it aimed at people learning to buy, install, and maintain personal computers. A second show, PC Update, hosted by Leo Laporte, was announced for October 1994, focusing on industry news. A company spokesman later acknowledged that The Personal Computing Show struggled because it was confined to minor channels and unfavorable time slots.

  In October 1994, owner William Bernard Ziff Jr. announced the sale of the publishing group to Forstmann Little and Company for $1.4 billion. His three sons, Daniel, Dirk, and Robert, had not wanted to take over the business. Ziff-Davis was then sold to SoftBank a year later. Under that new ownership, the company announced in April 1996 the establishment of ZDTV, a San Francisco unit producing television and internet broadcasts. Its first project was The Site, a daily prime time show co-hosted by Soledad O'Brien about the social and economic effects of technology, which aired on MSNBC when the network launched on the 15th of July 1996.

• 5. The Cable Network Gamble

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  On the 6th of May 1997, Ziff-Davis announced plans to launch ZDTV as a 24-hour cable network dedicated to computers and the internet. The company committed $100 million to the project and planned an early 1998 debut. Charter advertisers included IBM, Gateway 2000, Microsoft, and Charles Schwab, totaling 11 at launch. Ziff-Davis CEO Eric Hippeau framed the opportunity in competitive terms, and company executive Larry Wangberg described the network's ambition as becoming to computing what CNN is to news and what ESPN is to sports.

  The network launched on the 11th of May 1998, initially reaching cable systems in Las Vegas, Detroit, parts of Georgia near Atlanta, and parts of Maine. In November 1998, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's holding company Vulcan Ventures invested $54 million in ZDTV, acquiring a 33-percent stake. The network drew critical praise but struggled to secure placement on major cable systems, partly because Ziff-Davis refused to pay the $100 to $150 million launch fees that other new networks offered cable operators.

  Ziff-Davis put ZDTV up for sale on the 16th of July 1999. Vulcan purchased the remaining two-thirds of the network in a deal completed on the 21st of January 2000, worth $204.8 million. The deal allowed the network to keep its name. Days later, on the 28th of January 2000, Ziff-Davis announced the sale of its magazine division to Willis Stein and Partners for $780 million. In July 2000, CNET Networks agreed to acquire Ziff-Davis Inc. for $1.6 billion in stock, forming what was considered the eighth-largest internet company at the time.

• 6. Bankruptcy, Revival, and Acquisitions

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  The merged entity did not hold together long. In 2001, a new company called Ziff Davis Media Inc., backed by Willis Stein and Partners and former Ziff Davis CEO James Dunning, struck a deal with CNET Networks to acquire the URLs and online content licensing rights to 11 publications, including PC Magazine, CIO Insight, and eWEEK. On the 5th of March 2008, Ziff Davis Media Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It emerged from court-supervised restructuring in July 2009, announcing at that point the end of PC Magazine's print edition. On the 6th of January 2009, the company sold 1UP.com to Hearst's UGO Entertainment and published the final issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly.

  On the 4th of June 2010, former Time Inc. executive Vivek R. Shah announced the acquisition of Ziff Davis with backing from Boston private equity firm Great Hill Partners. The properties at that point included PCMag.com, ExtremeTech, and several smaller technology sites, reaching over 7 million users per month. Shah moved quickly to expand, acquiring sites including logicbuy.com, geek.com, and computershopper.com. On the 16th of November 2012, Great Hill sold the company to J2 Global for $175 million in an all-cash deal, approximately 2.9 times the company's estimated 2013 revenue.

  Under J2 Global, the acquisitions accelerated sharply. On the 4th of February 2013, Ziff Davis acquired IGN Entertainment from News Corporation. In 2014, it acquired Ookla, owner of Speedtest.net. In 2017, it bought Mashable for $50 million. By 2018, Ziff Davis reached 117 million readers across 115 countries through 60 international editions. In 2020, the company acquired RetailMeNot for $420 million. In April 2021, J2 Global announced a split into two publicly traded companies; after the split completed in September 2021, J2 rebranded as Ziff Davis, Inc., with Vivek Shah citing the brand's long and distinguished history and its digital transformation over the prior decade. In August 2024, Ziff Davis reacquired CNET from Red Ventures for $100 million, along with ZDNet, which the company had not owned since 2000.