Buying Ziff Davis, then, was a strategy to bring the online faxer two skills the company would need as it entered this new market: experience and legitimacy. J2’s president, Scott Turicchi, who heads the firm’s mergers and acquisitions, freely admits his company is a digital media ingenue. There were no indications of J2’s nascent interest in becoming a major digital content owner like News Corp. Until recently, all its acquisitions were made to bolster its existing online fax and cloud services business. Since 2000, J2 has purchased more than 40 companies. The company reported it had nearly $300 million in cash and executives at the time said that the money would be used for acquisitions, which are integral part of J2’s history. In truth, J2 has been hinting at an oncoming shopping spree since its last earnings call in early November. “The company has a good track record of mergers and acquisitions, but this isn’t your grandfather’s J2.”

“When they first took Ziff Davis, it was out of left field no one was expecting it,” said Greg Burns, an analyst with Sidoti & Co. Suddenly, with two major purchases in less than 90 days, the media industry was given notice of a new player whose emergence is as rapid as it is unlikely. IGN.com, the biggest of IGN Entertainment’s holdings, is consistently among the most visited video game websites.

This month, J2 won the frenzied bidding for IGN Entertainment Inc., a collection of news and review sites focused on video games that its previous owner, New York’s News Corp., had been shopping around.

Ign digital media kit