Raptive is owned by Raptive, Inc., an independent private company co-founded by Michael Sanchez and Andrew Shue. It formed through the combination of CafeMedia and AdThrive and rebranded in April 2023.

What happened to AdThrive and CafeMedia?

CafeMedia acquired AdThrive in 2016. In April 2023 the company retired both names, along with CafeMedia Ad Management, and unified everything under the Raptive brand.

Is Raptive a public company?

No. Raptive is privately held. Its ownership combines founder stakes with venture investors from CafeMedia's earlier funding rounds.

How many publishers does Raptive work with?

As of December 2025, Raptive reported more than 6,300 websites on its network, reaching approximately 226 million monthly unique visitors.

How does Raptive make money?

Raptive takes a share of the advertising revenue it generates for creators and publishers, and sells services including enterprise ad management, affiliate commerce support, and curated advertiser access to its network.

Media & Entertainment

Who Owns Raptive?

Q: Where is Raptive headquartered?

Raptive is headquartered in New York City at 1411 Broadway, with a distributed workforce across the United States.

Raptive is owned by Raptive, Inc., a private New York-based company that rebranded from CafeMedia in April 2023 after acquiring AdThrive in 2016. The company operates the world largest ad management platform for independent creators, representing more than 6,300 websites reaching roughly 226 million monthly unique visitors, and has paid creators more than $3.6 billion to date.

Parent Company

Raptive, Inc.

Founded

2007

Status

Private

Headquarters

New York, New York, USA

United StatesOfficial Website

Who Owns Raptive?

Parent Company: Raptive, Inc.
Ownership Type: Wholly owned
Company Type: Privately Held

Brand	Parent Company	Ownership Type
Raptive	Raptive, Inc.	Wholly owned

Where to Buy

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Raptive on Amazon

History of Raptive

Founded: 2007
Founders: Michael Sanchez, Andrew Shue

The company's roots trace to 2007, when the predecessor business launched women's lifestyle sites including CafeMom-style properties before shifting to advertising services. By 2014 CafeMedia had moved decisively into programmatic advertising, building monetization technology and sales capacity for independent publishers.

AdThrive followed a parallel path. Founded in 2013 by Andy Marzka, a former math teacher who began by optimizing ads on his wife Kelly's blog, it grew from 2 million to 63 million monthly unique visitors in about a year and became a leading ad management service for food, home, parenting, and DIY bloggers.

CafeMedia acquired AdThrive in September 2016, combining CafeMedia's programmatic technology with AdThrive's publisher-first service model. In 2018 the company sold its owned-and-operated content properties to concentrate entirely on supporting outside creators. It acquired audience-engagement startup Slickstream in 2022 and crossed $2 billion in cumulative creator payouts in early 2023.

On April 19, 2023, CafeMedia announced that CafeMedia, AdThrive, and CafeMedia Ad Management would merge into a single brand, Raptive, positioning the company as a "creator company" rather than a pure ad network. Growth continued after the rebrand: in December 2025 the company announced its network had surpassed 6,300 sites, with more than 1,000 added that year and 85 percent of new sites switching from rival ad managers. Cumulative creator payouts passed $3.6 billion, and Jounce Media's 2025 sentiment report ranked Raptive first in trust among sales houses.

About Raptive, Inc.

What is Raptive, Inc.?

Raptive, Inc. is a private New York ad tech and creator monetization company. It manages advertising for more than 6,300 independent websites and ranks as a top 10 global digital media property by audience reach.