I recently interviewed Cision global CEO Kevin Akeroyd. We rarely interview vendor CEOs, but Cision is an interesting case. Why? Very simple – Cision, or rather GTCR, the private equity fund backing it, has spent $2 billion dollars on buying PR/communications point solutions across data, content and measurement.
Yes that’s right, that’s not a typo, I did say two billion dollars. That’s massively more than anyone else has ever spent on PR/comms tools – ever. By a huge margin.
I’ve worked around the PR vendor market for about 10 years, I don’t pretend to be the world’s leading expert on it, but I get, I understand it.
And what I’ve never quite got my head around is why Cision spent quite so much money in this market; in the end presumably GTCR will want to make a profit on any exit. So I was looking forward to catching up with Kevin. It’s a long read but it’s an interesting perspective on:
-Why Cision has spent so much
- The role cloud technology has played in changing the advertising, paid content and marketing sectors
- The simple reason why PR budgets have not increased at the same rate as paid media budgets, despite the depreciating returns in the advertising sector
PR Moment interviews Cision global CEO Kevin Akeroyd and find out why Cision, or rather GTCR, the private equity fund backing it, has spent $2 billion dollars on buying PR/communications point solutions across data, content and measurement.