Access Intelligence Buys Four Marketing Brands From Penton

Rockville, Maryland-based b-to-b media company Access Intelligence (parent company of Red 7 Media, publisher of Folio:) has purchased four of Penton Media's marketing brands. Included in the deal are Chief Marketer, Multichannel Merchant, Direct and PROMO and their associated events and digital components.

The four brands were part of Penton's Marketing and Meetings group and will be incorporated into AI's Marketing and Media group, which currently includes Event Marketer, EXPO, Best Events, Event Design, LeadsCon, DM Confidential, min, Folio:, PR News, Cynopsis and CableFAX.

Penton group publisher Leslie Bacon and 15 employees will be joining AI as a result of the deal and will report to Kerry Smith, senior vice president of Access Intelligence.

"Particularly after buying LeadsCon, we've been trying to move into coverage of new, technology-driven marketing practices," says Access Intelligence president and CEO Don Pazour. "We thought Penton was doing a very good job in this area and so we approached them. It's not one of their larger product groupings and they were ready to make the move."

Pazour declined to offer a sale price, but the deal makes AI's Marketing and Media group the company's largest market cluster and the acquired assets' revenues are more than 60 percent digital with double-digit growth, he says.  

Access Intelligence, backed by Veronis Suhler Stevenson has been one of the few regularly acquisitive b-to-b media companies—in the last 18 months it has made four other acquisitions including LeadsCon, Red 7 Media, OR Manager and Cynopsis Media.

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