Media Central Corporation Inc. (CSE: FLYY, FSE: 3AT ) (“MediaCentral” or the “Company”) today released month-end data showcasing rising digital interaction across all of its wholly owned properties. Toronto’s NOW Magazine (“NOW” or “NOW Magazine”), Vancouver’s Georgia Straight (“the Straight”) and cannabis-specialty platform Canncentral.com (“Canncentral”) all reporting impressive month-over-month user, session and pageview growth for the second month in a row.
Comparing Google Analytics from March 2020 to April 2020, NOW Magazine expanded: users by 57 per cent, sessions by 56 per cent and pageviews by 49 per cent1. The Straight also reported increased digital interactions with users and sessions both up by 46 per cent and a 35 per cent2 upsurge in pageviews. Canncentral, which launched in fall 2019, continues to skyrocket with more cannabis enthusiasts engaging on the digital platform each month. In April, the cannabis lifestyle platform grew: users by 126 per cent, sessions by 120 per cent and pageviews by 94 per cent3.
“For the second month in a row, our digital publications are demonstrating rapid growth. We can attribute this to our technology team, strategic investment in upgrades, cross-pollinating our readers between publications and 24/7 quality omnichannel approach to publishing,” said Brian Kalish, CEO of MediaCentral. “We’ve invested in enhancing and digitizing our titles from introducing new content verticals like psychedelics and esports, to intensifying our social media presence, to launching a very well received podcast at NOW. Our efforts have successfully resulted in our ever-expanding audience spending more time on our digital platforms. This accelerates opportunities to monetize our properties as we look to tap into a vast $333 billion digital advertising industry4.”
Since taking ownership of the iconic urban publications NOW and the Straight in November 2019 and February 2020 respectively, the Company has invested in transforming the legacy publications into leading digital platforms. Recent announcements include the launch of new technology-based upgrades that will allow MediaCentral to monetize its existing audience including introducing affiliate marketing, automated marketing and programmatic advertising.
“We are thrilled with the progress we are making in transforming NOW and the Straight into modern media brands. This proves we are on track with our mission to amass an influential audience of 100 million consumers by consolidating, uniting and digitizing over 100 independent urban publications across North America. We are actively searching for synergistic and accretive acquisition opportunities to continue to grow our dedicated audience as we move forward in building a profitable and innovative digital publishing house,” said Kalish.
In addition to acquiring existing urban publications the Company plans to build new digital sites to expand its audience further. In April, MediaCentral announced the beta-testing of its fourth property, a digital site dedicated to the burgeoning esports and egaming industry.