 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet |
| Founded | 2012 |
| Headquarters | , United States |
Key people | |
| Products | Contextual advertising |
| Brands |
|
| Website | www |
7Hops.com Inc., doing business as Static Media,[1] is an American internet company established in 2012 based in Indianapolis. It operates ZergNet, a content recommendation business that promotes paid content across their network of brands.[2][3]
Established around 2011,[4] ZergNet has been compared to Outbrain, Adblade, Taboola and similar companies,[5][2] and the fact that the site itself has become popular with some end users invited a comparison to BuzzFeed.[3] Zergnet aims to distinguish itself from its competitors by focusing on high quality, less spammy offerings.[2][3]
The company's investors include Mark Cuban and Greycroft Partners.[3][6]
Static Media owns and promotes entertainment websites:[7]
As of July 2023, all of Static Media's brands had over 170 million site visitors per month, with an additional 20 million subscribers on YouTube, 15 million followers on Facebook, and 8 million subscribers on Snapchat. The majority of those siteviews come from its film sites, Looper and /Film, which have a combined 54 million site visitors a month. Both sites' critics' reviews also appear on Rotten Tomatoes.
Looper was the first site acquired by Static Media, in 2015.[8] Mashed, Nicki Swift, Grunge, and The List are original Static Media brands, and all four launched in 2016.[9][10][11][12] Nicki Swift's name is an in-joke from editors, who simply took the names of two trending celebrities at the time — Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift — and combined them. The next site Static Media added was SVG, an original brand, in 2017. The brand's game reviews are featured on Open Review.[13]
SlashGear was launched in 2005 and was acquired by Static Media sometime after the company's debut in 2015.[14]
Health Digest is a Static Media original site, and it debuted in the third quarter of 2020.[15] Alongside general health reporting, many of the brand's early articles covered the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tasting Table was launched in 2008 and was acquired by Static Media in 2021, as well as /Film, which began in 2005.[16][17] House Digest is one of the site's newer home-grown brands, launching as a Static original site in 2021.[18]
Wrestling Inc. is the second-oldest of Static Media's branded sites — it was founded in 1996. Wrestling Inc. and Glam, the latter of which was founded in 2003, were both acquired in 2022 by Static Media.[19][20] The Daily Meal, a pun on the name of British tabloid the Daily Mail, launched in 2008 but was also acquired by Static in 2022.[21]
Explore, a travel-focused brand, launched as a Static Media original site in November 2022.[22]
Women.com is the oldest that Static Media owns, having been founded in 1995, but it wasn't acquired by Static until early 2023.[23] Also acquired in 2023 is Food Republic, another food vertical for the company, which was founded in 2010 but launched in 2011.[24]