SheKnows Media now has $22 million extra to play with, as the result of an expanded credit facility, or loan, it closed with Ally Technology Finance on Monday. The company wants more funds to invest in its technology platform Momentum and to use for shopping.
CEO Philippe Guelton said SheKnows Media is “getting ready for acquisitions” of companies focused on empowering women. In August 2014, it bought StyleCaster, which is now one of its two pillar brands, along with SheKnows.com.
SheKnows also bought BlogHer in November 2014 and had previously acquired a handful of female-focused publishers, giving it 92 million unique visitors and a spot among the comScore top 50 publishers.
SheKnows’ acquisition of StyleCaster serves as a model of how the company might bring an outside publisher into its fold.
After the acquisition, StyleCaster hooked into Momentum, which is both a content management system and a way for advertisers and bloggers to launch and measure influencer marketing campaigns.
StyleCaster and its advertisers also benefit from SheKnows’ network of influencers. In recent months, the publication assembled a network of 300 style influencers advertisers can leverage for campaigns. StyleCaster publisher Matt Rice expects that network to expand to thousands of influencers.
SheKnows hopes its head start entering the influencer marketing space will remain as the space becomes more mature and crowded. Other influencer marketing networks have cropped up, and traditional media brands like Condé Nast now offer advertisers extension into their groups of influencers.
“Seventy-five percent of total ad revenue is connected one way or another with an influencer marketing campaign,” Guelton said. “Very little business that we do doesn’t have a part of it.”
While Guelton wouldn’t get in too deep into SheKnows’ product road map, it plans on using the funds to build tech addressing marketer and publisher challenges around influencer marketing. That may include “ways we engage with influencers and activate them, self-serve social marketing tools for brands and agencies and robust tools to manage communities on behalf of brands,” he said.
Guelton, who came on board three years ago, said SheKnows breaks even.
