The sale of the Seattle humor site was announced in February, but the identity of the buyer was not disclosed until now.
Cheezburger has revealed the parent company that purchased it in February, and the acquisition means it will be working with fellow online humor site eBaum’s World.
The new owner of the Seattle humor site is Literally Media, the brand created by digital-marketing company MindAd Digital. Literally Media, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, also owns a controlling stake in San Francisco-based eBaum’s World.
After conducting a search for a buyer, Cheezburger announced in February it had been acquired but didn’t disclose the company that had scooped it up.
Literally Media was started by digital-media entrepreneur Jacob Nizri and a team with deep expertise in selling digital advertisements, said Cheezburger CEO Scott Moore.
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Moore, who will continue to lead Cheezburger and take on the title of CEO of MindAd, said he met the eBaum’s team while looking for a buyer last year and saw an opportunity to work together.
“I felt we were not big enough on a stand-alone basis to attract the high-value deals we wanted from advertisers,” Moore said. “We need to scale up because advertisers need to buy scale to be effective.”
Cheezburger, known for its once wildly popular “I can has Cheezburger” cat memes, has struggled in recent years.
It hit its peak in 2012 after reeling in a $30 million funding round of financing from investors but soon after entered rough waters.
The company laid off a large portion of its staff, and visitors to its site fell sharply as online traffic increasingly moved to mobile devices.
Now, Cheezburger has a “lean, mean” staff of 16 people, Moore said.
The company’s first priority will be to attract bigger audiences from the millennial generation and the generation following them.
“They don’t really watch TV anymore,” Moore said. “The ways marketers had in the past to reach those very valuable young consumers have become much more cut off.”
Cheezburger intends to grow its audiences by joining forces with its new San Francisco partner.
Combined, Cheezburger and eBaum’s World attracted about 21 million unique visitors to its sites in the past 30 days, according to Quantcast.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
As part of the acquisition, Literally Media also gains the Know Your Meme brand, which was owned by Cheezburger and is based in New York.