Federated Media Raising More Money, Looking to Sell

There’s a ton of interesting data included in a new MergerMarket interview with Federated Media Publishing COO Jason Weisberger. The report itself is proprietary research, although a copy was forwarded to us.

The company, which sells advertising for a number of blogs and other websites (including TechCrunch), had revenues of $4.5 million in 2006, its first year in operation. Projections for 2007 were $30 million in sales and “several million dollars” in profit.

Weisberger said “If Federated Media keeps performing the way we’ve predicted in 2007, it would be a really ripe time for a media player who understands this space to buy us now rather than having to buy us for a whole lot more later.” The article also said “While he was unsure how much Federated might sell for, Weisberger said similar companies have gotten 8x to 10x gross revenue…Another possible valuation for a sale of the company is a multiple of 25x EBITDA.”

There was a laundry list of possible acquirers mentioned by Weisberger, including media companies (AOL, CBS, Google, IAC/Interactive, Fox, Yahoo were mentioned) and advertising agencies (Universal McCann, Ogilvy & Mathers, aQuantive, Saatchi & Saatchi, and TBWA/Chiat/Day).

The company is also considering a number of acquisitions, and raising a new round of financing of $3 – 8 million to pay for them. The company previously raised $2.2 million.

Update: I spoke to John Battelle, who says that this interview was done under the impression that it would be used as background material only, and that they have no intention of selling the company in the near future. He also said that the company is not actively fundraising at this time. Battelle also comments below.