Berentson told AdExchanger that Stagwell is not acquiring the publishers in Freestar’s network, just the tech they use to monetize and the existing client relationships. Stagwell will retain all of Freestar’s employees and its executive leadership team.
Evolving to compete
The Freestar acquisition is the latest in a series of moves by Stagwell, which launched 11 years ago and has evolved rapidly because it “doesn’t have this enormous legacy holding us back,” Berentson said.
Just this year, Stagwell rolled out its own curation platform, Stagwell Curate; reorganized and rebranded its global media business as Stagwell Media; and brought The Media Machine to market.
Berentson said the Freestar deal is a continuation of Stagwell’s mission to serve advertisers while delivering more working media spend to publishers.
Freestar’s partnerships with premium news publishers, including the Associated Press, Reuters, Fortune and The Boston Globe, should help Stagwell advance its Future of News initiative to direct bigger media budgets to news orgs, Berentson said. Stagwell launched the initiative in 2024 to persuade advertisers that news is brand safe and effective.
But Stagwell also saw opportunity to work with Freestar publishers that fall outside its broader news monetization efforts, he said.
As examples, he pointed to Freestar clients Sports Reference (which includes Baseball Reference and other sports stats sites), Enthusiast Gaming (which operates online communities and wikis for video game IPs) and SignUpGenius (which manages web registrations, fundraisers and online ticket sales).
He added that Freestar’s service also helps mid-tail and long-tail publishers connect with advertisers.
With Freestar, Stagwell can curate higher-fidelity audiences across these publisher properties than it could before, Berentson said. It can also use the Freestar network to add audience extension for wider media buys and to improve its own principal media buying strategy.
