The Arena Group Holdings has announced the acquisition of the intellectual property of ShopHQ from IV Media, LLC, marking a significant expansion into e-commerce, data syndication, and interactive social selling. The deal revives the legacy of the 35-year-old shopping brand with a new focus on leveraging first-party data, content integration, and creator-led commerce to drive audience engagement and advertiser value.
As a long-standing television shopping platform, ShopHQ once generated more than $500 million in annual revenue. Now, under The Arena Group’s ownership, the brand will evolve into a digitally native retail platform, merging commerce and content across web, video, and social media channels. The company plans to use its vast audience reach, spanning millions of engaged readers, to integrate targeted retail experiences that connect users directly to products they want, supported by personalized data insights and modern content strategies.
The Arena Group’s CEO, Paul Edmondson, emphasized that the acquisition will help create new monetization streams by merging editorial content and commerce.
By combining ShopHQ’s first-party customer data with Arena’s digital publishing network, the company aims to enhance its programmatic advertising inventory, improve conversion rates, and offer advertisers greater precision in reaching desired audiences.
In its next phase, ShopHQ will appear on social platforms, YouTube, and its dedicated website, offering customers interactive, on-demand shopping experiences. The brand will adopt a creator-led model that prioritizes engagement through live and social selling, tapping into trends that connect influencers, audiences, and products in real time. Additionally, Arena Group intends to use a dropship inventory model, enabling agility in product offerings, minimizing costs, and eliminating reliance on aged or overstocked goods.
The new iteration of ShopHQ will focus on rekindling relationships with long-time customers while building a community of new, younger audiences through modern commerce storytelling and live digital engagement.
KEY QUOTES:
“With the acquisition of ShopHQ, a former $500 million plus revenue company, through the utilization of ShopHQ’s powerful first party customer data and Arena’s reach to millions of engaged readers daily, we aim to synergize and monetize commerce and content across our digital platforms. The vision is to create pools of first party data sets allowing our advertisers to reach specific, targeted audiences leading to an increased value of our programmatic inventory. We believe this acquisition allows us to not only to increase our active engagement with Arena’s readers and bring them the products they are asking for but also increase the value and conversion rates for our advertisers. We believe the bridge we’re building between data, brands and users has enormous potential.”
Paul Edmondson, Chief Executive Officer of The Arena Group
“ShopHQ has a loyal customer base that we’re eager to re-engage with trusted brands and experts. Combining Arena’s capabilities with live-selling and commerce content will enable ShopHQ to excite current customers while engaging and converting new ones.”
Jessica Gregory, General Manager of ShopHQ
