Salon Media Group Inc (SLNM) SEC Filing 10-Q Quarterly report for the period ending Friday, June 30, 2017

Exhibit 99.1

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 11, 2017

Salon Media Group Reports June Quarter 2017 Results

13% YoY Revenue Growth and Reduced Losses

NEW YORK, NY (August 11, 2017). Salon Media Group, Inc. (“Salon,” the “Company” or “We”) (OTCQB: SLNM) today announced its results for the three months ended June 30, 2017.

Highlights:

Revenue from continuing operations for the period was $1.5 million, an increase of 13% from $1.3 million for the three months ended June 30, 2016. The increase in revenue was a result of a continued significant industry shift in online advertising to advertising increasingly being sold through software-based “programmatic” technology. Salon’s advertising sold through networks that access these programmatic buys accounted for 83% of total advertising revenues for the quarter ended June 30, 2017. Salon has been making changes to its advertising footprint to capture the greater programmatic opportunity for its display and video advertising inventory and as a result improved its CPMs from programmatic advertising by 19% in the quarter ended June 30, 2017, as compared to the quarter ended June 30, 2016. The higher programmatic CPMs were offset, however, by a decline in traffic from the same period last year, which led to a smaller inventory of advertisement products to sell, and a smaller relative increase in revenues.

Net losses decreased to $0.6 million during the quarter ended June 30, 2017, compared to $0.8 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2016. The decreased losses resulted from an increase in revenues and a corresponding decrease in operating expense to $1.7 million, compared to $2.1 million in the same period last year. The financials included several non-recurring items, including $0.3 million non-cash interest expense recorded for the beneficial conversion feature of capital raising transactions during the quarter ended June 30, 2017, as well as the reversal of $0.2 million accrued bonuses for former employees.

The Company’s focus on growing traffic has shifted from volume to quality, in order to maximize its ability to monetize page views with higher CPM video and display advertising. According to data compiled by Google Analytics, average unique visitors to the Salon.com Website during the quarter ended June 30, 2017 decreased 23% and 9%, as compared to the quarters ended June 30, 2016 and March 31, 2017, respectively. The decline in traffic was due to several factors, including changes in the algorithms used by social media websites to promote news content, which led to lower referral traffic from Facebook and Twitter, and the implementation of software to remove non-human traffic. At the same time, the Company increased video views to 39 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2017, compared to approximately 15 million video views in the quarter ended March 31, 2017 as Salon’s editorial team placed greater emphasis on its video products. The Company has been refining its strategy in producing original video content, to emphasize video displayed on its Website instead of on social media platforms that have barriers to monetization. The Company’s goal continues to be to add high-quality, diversified content to Salon.com, in order to attract premium video advertising.

Social media continues to be a significant focus for the Company. Salon continues to make regular updates to its Website to optimize content to be shared on social media with a special focus on its mobile platforms. In June 2017, Salon had approximately 971,000 Facebook “likes” and 988,000 Twitter followers, an annual increase of 7% and 49% respectively.

The Company continues to see a significant shift to users accessing Salon.com from mobile devices, with 67% of users visiting the Website from mobile devices in June 2017. We continue to have a company-wide focus on our users’ mobile needs, especially quick and easy access to fast-loading content optimized for better readability on smaller screens. We also have increased focus on monetizing mobile traffic by implementing native and other mobile-optimized advertising.

Jordan Hoffner, Chief Executive Officer of Salon said, “I am pleased about our progress on both the quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year numbers as our plan is beginning to show tangible results. Our focus on optimizing the programmatic landscape is beginning to come to fruition.”