Publishing company Aegis Communications has acquired three new titles from Ascend Media. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Ascend’s The Compendium of Continuing Education in Dentistry, Contemporary Esthetics and Contemporary Dental Assisting will join other dentist-geared titles at Aegis. The acquisition includes the titles’ corresponding Web sites.
“It was a situation where we had the ability to do it,” said Aegis president and CEO Daniel Perkins of the acquisitions. “[At Ascend] our team ran the Compendium and launched all those other titles that we acquired. We ran them, we launched them, so our team has intimate knowledge of those publications. We have a solid plan to revamp them and bring them back to where we think they belong.”
When Perkins left Ascend in 2005, some of Ascend’s healthcare publishing experts folowed him, enabling the launch of Aegis flagship title Inside Dentistry. Inside Dentistry now garners 12% of the market share of ad dollars and is number 3 in its field.
Other magazines in the Aegis stable include Advanced Aesthetics & Interdisciplinary Dentistry, Functional Esthetics & Restorative Dentistry, The Middle East Journal of Oral Health and Dentistry India.
All Aegis titles are ad-supported, with 95% of ads from dental industry-related companies. The average rate of a full page ad in Inside Dentistry is $8,300. A controlled circulation strategy aims the titles at qualified dental professionals, with some titles split for demographics or by specialty.
Perkins said that the new titles were not adding many new names to Aegis’ existing mailing lists, since all the publications serve a similar core audience. However, the new titles create value by offering more possible ad pages and ad-sale combinations to advertisers. Perkins predicts that the three new titles will double Aegis’ net worth.
Only one employee from Ascend will join Aegis with the acquisition.
