San Francisco based green business media publishers TriplePundit and Sustainable Industries have announced a merger designed to combine their readership and resources to build a powerhouse media company.

Both brands will remain intact for the foreseeable future, and both digital platforms will continue focusing on their distinct voices, offerings and audiences. Efficiencies will be realized through shared resources and operations, abundant cross-platform business development opportunities, and a long-term plan to integrate web sites.

”It’s been a long road building TriplePundit as a leading source for information and conversation about sustainability in business,” said Nick Aster, founder of Triple Pundit. “Formalizing a relationship with our longtime ally Sustainable Industries makes perfect sense, and our new team is ready to take things to the next level.”

The merged company, which boasts impressive growth in its combined 15-year operational history, will roll out a suite of new and enhanced products and services in late 2011 and throughout 2012, including increased high-quality content, new digital media, indispensable audience tools, an expanded events strategy, and offerings that bridge both platforms.

Foremski’s Take: Congratulations to my friend Nick Aster! Nick worked with Gawker and he helped my site get started in 2004, he has a tremendous amount of publishing experience.

We can expect to see more of these types of deals, not just in the green sector but across all types of media. The reason is that scale matters for online publications and aggregating reader numbers matters for advertising buyers.

You would think that trend towards greater personlization and targeting by advertisers should result in specialist media publications being able to succeed with smaller numbers of readers. However, advertising agencies and media buyers are still fixated on buying large numbers of readers even though they seek to influence a small subset.

Cross-posted at [Silicon Valley Watcher (http://s.tt/13BVK)]