| Advance Publications, Inc. | |
| Trade Name: | Advance |
| Type: | Private |
| Industry: | Mass media |
| Founder: | Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr. |
| Hq Location Country: | U.S. |
| Num Locations: | 102 |
| Area Served: | Worldwide |
| Products: | Newspapers, news and information websites, magazines, television |
| Revenue: | US$2.4 billion |
| Revenue Year: | 2016 |
| Owner: | Newhouse family |
| Num Employees: | 12,000 |
| Footnotes: | [1] |
Advance Publications, Inc. is a privately held American media company owned by the families of Donald Newhouse and Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr., the sons of company founder Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr. It owns publishing-relating companies including American City Business Journals, MLive Media Group, and Condé Nast, and is a major shareholder in Charter Communications (13% ownership), Reddit (42 million shares), and Warner Bros. Discovery (8% ownership).
The company is named after the Staten Island Advance, the first newspaper owned by the Newhouse family, in which Sam Newhouse bought a controlling interest in 1922.
On August 25, 2018, Advance/Newhouse ("A/N") notified Charter Communications that it intended to establish a credit facility collateralized by a portion of Advance/Newhouse Common Units in Charter Communications Holdings, LLC.[2] That same month, Condé Nast CEO Robert A. Sauerberg Jr. announced his five-year strategy to generate $600 million in new revenue from new revenue streams while driving costs out of the business.[3]
In March 2020, the company acquired The Ironman Group, a mass participation sports platform including the Ironman Triathlons and Absa Cape Epic mountain bike race, from the Wanda Sports Group.[4]
For most of its history, Advance had no official headquarters; most publications listed the Advance offices in Staten Island's Grasmere neighborhood as its nominal headquarters.[5]
While it did not have a corporate headquarters, Advance did operate a press bureau in Washington, D.C., the Newhouse News Service (NNS). Opened in 1961, NNS served as a national news bureau for all Advance portfolio publications until it closed in late 2008 as a cost-cutting measure due to the 2007–2008 financial crisis.[6]
Advance was ranked as the 221st largest privately held company in the United States, according to Forbes.[7]
See main article: List of Advance subsidiaries. the group owns Condé Nast, which includes the magazines Vogue, The New Yorker, and Wired,[8] Turnitin, The Ironman Group, Advance Local, American City Business Journals, Stage Entertainment, Leaders Group, and the Seattle-based digital agency Pop, Inc., and is a large shareholder in Reddit.[9]
The company holds an 8.16% ownership in media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery,[10] carried over from its 31% stake in predecessor Discovery, Inc.[11] Advance also owns a 13% stake (as of 2016) in Charter Communications, which it received when Bright House Networks merged with Charter.[12] [13]