Disney Gains Foothold With Parenting Bloggers With Purchase of Babble
Walt Disney Co. has announced that it is buying Babble Media Inc., a five-year-old website devoted to news and perspectives written by moms and dads. The popular online site that boasts a strong following for its 200 bloggers, will be sold to Disney for between $40-$45 million.
As advertising and blogging become increasingly more integrated, this announcement will only add to the growing business model that fosters partnership between large corporations and bloggers.
According to a recent article, Disney’s acquisition of the site will support the media giant’s plan to integrate its own cache of parenting-related content within the blog posts of particular writers. While some may see this as the further blur between the lines of advertising and blogs, Disney maintains that links within posts would be optional, and to the discretion of Babble. “[It’s] Babble’s call if and what they choose to use,” said a Disney spokesperson. Brooke Chaffin, Disney Interactive Media Group’s senior vice president of Moms and Family maintains that her employer’s purchase was not executed as yet another way to create additional channels for product placement. “We are not enlisting these bloggers to go out and promote a ‘Cars’ film,” she said.
Disney maintains that links embedded in bloggers’ posts will only be used at the discretion of Babble editors.
Babble was founded by husband-and-wife team, Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman, who view the Disney acquisition as a way to enhance their already popular site. “We will now be able to innovate faster, enhance the content, the product, the technology, the interactive experience,” they noted. This isn’t the first time that this couple has hit an online goldmine with a successful website. Prior to forming Babble in 2006, the pair experienced considerable success with the popular website, Nerve.com that they founded in 1997.
From Disney’s perspective, owning Babble can only be viewed as a positive win for the company. Having recently launched a line of infant and newborn clothing, owning Babble will likely give the media giant a significant avenue in which to reach parents of even the youngest of children. Parents, bloggers and other readers, however, will be the final determinants of the success of this partnership.
Image courtesy of www.auditionsfordisney.com
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