Are Media has announced a new strategic partnership with Dotdash Meredith, labelled as a ‘transformational moment’, by CEO Jane Huxley.
Dotdash Meredith (DDM) is the largest digital and print publisher in the US, known for its portfolio of brands spanning lifestyle, food, health, finance, and entertainment. Brands include PEOPLE, Better Homes & Gardens, Allrecipes, REAL SIMPLE and Investopedia.
Are Media says the new partnership effectively doubles its digital footprint, expanding its monthly online audience to 10.4 million*, in addition to its 6 million** strong print readership. This would position Are Media as Australia’s leading women’s lifestyle network, a milestone moment for Huxley, who views the partnership as a game-changer for one clear reason.
“Scale, scale, scale,” she tells Mediaweek. “What this partnership does for Are Media is give us unprecedented scale in the verticals and audiences that we care about the most.”
“When you look at the DDM portfolio, it’s very similar to the digital business we run here; the homes vertical, the entertainment vertical, the luxury vertical, the lifestyle vertical. It’s what we have already – premium brands with a trusted, authoritative position in Australia with our consumers – but it gives us enormous scale to present the largest possible premium audience numbers to our clients.”
‘Number one women’s lifestyle publisher’
Huxley is clear about what success from the partnership looks like over the next 12 months: a seat at the table with some of media’s biggest players and deep integration into media plans and securing upfront commitments from key clients.
“Google’s sitting there, Facebook’s sitting there, Are Media’s sitting there and Snapchat’s sitting there,” she says with conviction, signalling the company’s ambition to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the industry’s biggest digital players.
Anna Quinn, Are Media’s, new Director of Sales, agrees this deal should change the way agencies view the business which publishes New Idea, Australian Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day. “This makes us outright – no questions asked – the number one women’s lifestyle publisher in this market, and that’s just fantastic,” she says.
Woman’s Day cover
No plans to localise content
While the DDM partnership won’t alter the consumer-facing experience – and there are no plans to localise content specifically for Australia – it should significantly impact the commercial side of the business, unlocking new scale, inventory, and data capabilities for advertisers across Are Media’s premium environments.
“A lot of strength for DDM lies in their organic search capabilities,” says Huxley. “So, let’s just say you’re searching for a particular recipe, it’s very likely that allrecipes.com will come up in the top three search positions. Why? Because Meredith have built a competence in SEO off the back of their scale, their global brands, and content excellence in that category.”
She adds, “It just means that we’ve got a lot more scale to deliver out campaigns from a consumer perspective. Customers are still gravitating towards the brands they love, they’re still searching for the things that they care about, but from a back-end client perspective, they’re all aggregated together, giving us that reach and scale.”
Moving beyond legacy perception
For Quinn, who joined the business in March 2025, after a 25-year career working at major media businesses including Nine, Hogarth and ACP Magazines, this new deal should mark an acknowledgment that Are Media can shake off it’s legacy media reputation with media buyers.
“I think Mamamia has done an incredible job of spruiking its business, and absolutely all credit to them, but we’ve been a little bit more humble and a little bit quieter. This is now our opportunity to make some noise, to show our scale, and to go and get on those briefs,” she says.
The team is embarking on an education blitz to make sure planners and buyers understand this new phase of the company.
“It really is a new era,” says Quinn. “And the whole team is excited to get out there and put our best foot forward.”
The data advantage
In addition, this partnership goes beyond inventory and content. Via Google Ad Manager (GAM), Are Media can now access Dotdash Meredith’s rich behavioral and audience segments to power more effective campaigns. While first-party data remains with the originating publisher, the insight and access are transformative.
“It will help us to rise the tide on what we’ve been doing up until now,” Huxley notes.
The partnership, six months in the making, followed a formal RFP process. Are Media credits its success not only to its premium brands but also to its ready-to-go sales team. “We are already in the market. We already have these verticals. That was a key reason they chose us,” she says.
More tools, more opportunities
Crucially, for Huxley and Quinn, it’s important that the company does not pivot away from print and this digital deal is seen as an acceleration of Are Media’s omnichannel strategy, adding digital firepower to the trusted print brands that remain core to the business.
“It doesn’t change anything other than the rocket fuel,” says Huxley.
The DDM relationship dovetails neatly with Are Media’s premium short-form video strategy and opens doors to new campaign formats. “It gives us so many more things in the toolkit,” says Quinn. “It’s a fantastic set of assets.”
The road ahead
As the DDM partnership takes shape, Are Media’s success will depend not just on reach, but on how effectively it can convert scale into sustained commercial relevance in a market increasingly defined by data-driven performance, platform dominance, and global competition
“It feels like a transformational moment for us,” says Huxley. “This is adding scale to all of the goodness that we’ve been doing for the last few years, and to have somebody of Anna’s calibre come and join the organisation, feels like it’s new days for us. Internally that gives a real sense of optimism and momentum to our business.”
Source: *Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, Mar 2024 to Feb 2025, P14+, combined Are Media
and Dotdash Meredith average audience 10.4 million.
**Roy Morgan Single Source December 2024