UBM Acquires Content Marketing Institute with Content Marketing World Event

June 1, 2016

UBM continues to expand its portfolio in the U.S. with the acquisition of Content Marketing Institute, which produces the annual Cleveland, Ohio-based event – Content Marketing World.

In addition, CMI holds the annual Intelligent Content Conference, as well as has media channels and marketing services that support and inform the content marketing community.

“The CMI business is complementary to UBM’s existing technology business and we see excellent opportunities to help CMI grow to its full potential, to cross promote to technology marketing professionals and to provide additional insight as the relationship between marketing and technology evolves.” said Scott Schulman, CEO, UBM Americas.

Driven first by content creation and second by the technologies that allow marketers to successfully distribute, automate, track, analyze and measure, content marketing is one of the fastest growth segments of the marketing industry.

Marco Pardi, managing director, Technology Group, UBM Americas, said, “The CMI team has an incredible knowledge of the industry and is very high-touch with their customers. Their passion for content marketing is contagious, and we are looking forward to welcoming the respected CMI team into our UBM family.”

Joe Pulizzi, founder and CEO of CMI, added, “UBM Americas is the perfect home for Content Marketing Institute and Content Marketing World. We are ready to expand and grow to continue our mission of education, training and serving the content marketing community.”

In a blog post on the CMI Web site, Pulizzi said that nothing would be changing in the way the company runs its business and provides content at this time, although there could be changes in the futures.

“Even though we always imagined selling the business at some point, this was an incredibly difficult decision. We would never decide to sell the business if our vision would be compromised in any way,” Pulizzi added.

He said, “One of the reasons UBM decided to make this purchase is because of the passion of the CMI Team and the community. Continuing that is critical to our ongoing success. Simply put, I’m more passionate than ever about what’s going on in content marketing and in people like you who are making change happen around the world.”

This year’s Content Marketing World is on tap Sept. 6-9 in Cleveland. 

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