Wider, Deeper, More Oblique: Diversification of Media Company

Today, media companies in modern societies are increasingly expanding their business into upstream and downstream stages of the media industry’s value chain or even into completely new markets with new product and service offerings. This has led to a complex, intertwined, and, for the outsider, extremely confusing revenue structure of media organizations. The article explains the general principles of the diversification concept and the different types of diversification, names reasons for diversification of media companies, and shows diversification strategies of the media industry as well as the influence of content marketing as a diversification strategy on the media market. Using the example of the largest European media group, Bertelsmann SE, the degree of diversification and its calculation are presented in a case study.