Red Ventures

Red Ventures is an American media company that owns and operates brands such as Lonely Planet, CNET, ZDNet, The Points Guy, Healthline, and Bankrate. Red Ventures focuses on news, advice, and review websites. The company's corporate headquarters is located in Fort Mill, South Carolina, a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina.

History
Red Ventures was founded on September 29, 1999, in Fort Mill, South Carolina by Ric Elias and Dan Feldstein. Before its 2020 acquisitions, the company had grown into an international presence with more than 100 brands, 3,000 employees, and operations in the United Kingdom and Brazil.

In 2015, the company got a $250 million investment from Silver Lake. That same year, it doubled the size of its headquarters and bought postal services company Imagitas from Pitney Bowes.

Red Ventures acquired Bankrate Inc. for $1.24 billion in cash in a deal announced July 3, 2017.

On September 14, 2020, Red Ventures agreed to purchase the CNET Media Group from ViacomCBS for $500 million. On December 1, 2020, Red Ventures bought Lonely Planet from Tennessee-based NC2 Media.

In 2021, the company had 4,500 employees and 751 million readers per month.

Business model
In 2023, The Verge described the business model of the company as "publish[ing] content designed to rank highly in Google search for "high-intent" queries and ... monet[izing] that traffic with lucrative affiliate links". Stories are aimed at people who are likely to buy something ("high-intent"), with a particular focus on financial content such as credit cards, as the media company gets payments in the hundreds of dollars for each customer that buys a credit card. Red Ventures also aims to get paid for guiding readers to buy drugs and medical consultations.

The characterization came after the website Futurism found several articles published by Red Ventures properties, including CNET, were quietly written by artificial intelligence software, with the stories containing numerous inaccuracies and instances of plagiarism. Red Ventures announced layoffs at CNET a few weeks after the reports from The Verge and Futurism, which the company says were unrelated.

Futurism additionally highlighted undisclosed AI-generated, SEO-focused content produced by Red Ventures's education division (internally RV EDU). This content promotes schools with which Red Ventures maintains affiliate agreements, such as University of Phoenix (a for-profit college owned by Apollo Global Management) and Liberty University (founded by conservative activist and Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell). Websites operated by RV EDU include BestColleges.com, TheBestSchools.org, NurseJournal.org, ComputerScience.org, and Psychology.org, "as well as numerous sites with domain names that imply they're nonprofits".

In July 2023, Elias announced that AI-generated content, both editorial content and targeted advertisements, would be a major part of the company's business model moving forward.

Following CNET publishing AI-generated stories containing errors and plagiarized content, as well as incorrect attributions to human writers, the Wikipedia community downgraded CNET's reliability, such that all content since the Red Ventures acquisition should not be considered reliable. Employees unionized in response to layoffs and the risk to their professional reputations. Red Ventures subsequently attempted to sell CNET for $250 million; the approximate halving of CNET's value under Red Ventures' ownership is attributed to interest rates, a slower ad market, and potential buyers expressing concern at the reputational damage of the AI scandals.

MyMove LLC and USPS Partnership
In 2015, Red Ventures acquired MyMove (formerly Imagitas), in large part due to their exclusive partnership with USPS. In 2011, Imagitas formed a 10 year exclusive partnership with the USPS to facilitate the official Change of Address process, which roughly 40 million people use each year.

In May 2023, Red Ventures agreed to pay the United States $2.75 million to resolve a whistleblower's allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by underpaying on contracts connected to the USPS change-of-address process.

Timeline

 * 1999: Red F, the precursor to Red Ventures, was founded.
 * 2003: Red Ventures is launched, beginning with DIRECTV (DirectstarTV brand).
 * 2008: Red Ventures acquires Modern Consumer
 * 2010: General Atlantic announces investment in Red Ventures, and Managing Director Anton Levy joins the board of directors.
 * 2012: Red Ventures acquires www.homeinsurance.com and with it a satellite office in Wilmington, North Carolina.
 * 2015: Silver Lake announces $250M strategic investment in Red Ventures.
 * 2015: May – Red Ventures acquires Imagitas (now MyMove) from Pitney Bowes for $310M.
 * 2016: Red Ventures acquires Soda.com
 * 2017: Red Ventures acquires Choose Energy
 * 2017: Red Ventures acquires Allconnect
 * 2017: Red Ventures acquires Bankrate, Inc. (including The Points Guy)
 * 2019: Red Ventures acquires HigherEducation.com
 * 2019: Red Ventures acquires Healthline
 * 2020: Red Ventures acquires Cord Cutters News
 * 2020: Red Ventures acquires CNET Media Group (including GameSpot, Metacritic, TV Guide, Chowhound, GameFAQs, Giant Bomb, Cord Cutters News, Comic Vine, and ZDNET) from ViacomCBS for $500 million.
 * 2020: Red Ventures acquires Lonely Planet from NC2 Media for an undisclosed amount.
 * 2021: Red Ventures acquires Healthgrades.com from Mercury Healthcare for an undisclosed amount.
 * 2022: Red Ventures closes Chowhound.
 * 2022: Red Ventures partners with UnitedHealth Group's Optum Health to launch RVO Health.
 * 2022: Fandom, Inc. acquires the sites GameSpot, Metacritic, TV Guide, GameFAQs, Giant Bomb, Comic Vine (which were all previously part of CNET Media Group) and Cord Cutters News from Red Ventures.