San Diego Union-Tribune Buys DiscoverSD.com; Will Merge Deals Database

The San Diego Union-Tribune is buying DiscoverSD. com, a lifestyle website founded in 2006. The acquisition, in the works for six months, was made with an eye toward expanding the UT’s fast growing Daily Deal business arm, which is expected to generate $10 million this year in new revenues.

The merger of the two databases will give the company’s separate deals programs a reach of 230,000 people. The UT has migrated to its own deals platform after originally working with Shoutback. DiscoverSD will also be using the UT platform.

Besides deals, The UT and DiscoverSD will seek synergies on marketing and website development, while maintaining separate brands and operations. There won’t be news sharing. “We are a multi-platform company, and we need to be aggressive about growing in all of these areas, said Publisher Ed Moss, in a UT article. “[But] they’re positioned differently than our company, and we need to keep it that way.”

DiscoverSD.com reaches 200,000 unique visitors per month, compared with 3.3 million uniques for SignOnSanDiego.com, the Union-Tribune’s website arm. The UT’s audience tends to be older, while a third of DiscoverSD.com’s visitors are between 18 and 34.