Now branching out in to e-books after recently marking its first birthday, Tina Brown’s Daily Beast is starting to syndicate its webzine content out through third-party destinations.
The IAC-backed current affairs zine has just inked deals to publish through MSN in the U.S. and UK, with further agreements with Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), Roadrunner and Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) anticipated soon.
On-site traffic is all well and good, but there’s also value in joining the ranks of publishers syndicating through partners. It’s not known whether these deals involve portals paying for Beast content directly, a share of ad revenue from Beast articles or a mixture of both. The site has been cautious about display advertising as it tries to build audience.
The MSN UK deal is the first time the Beast is making a conscious play for UK readers. It was revealed by MSN UK executive producer Peter Bale to a handful of MSN’s other content publishing partners in a Monday briefing.
“It fits with a similar partnership we have with Newsweek that has proven successful,” Bale said. “This is not an obvious product to bring to the UK – we’re hoping it will be a little bit special, we’re going to see how it works with a UK audience.
“It will be content from the U.S. site that they believe is appropriate for a UK audience – content for international news, or on Tiger Woods, or they may turn their gaze more to the UK than they have in the past. It was extremely valuable for us to have Newsweek during the whole Obama race, for example.”
Back in August, the Beast denied to paidContent:UK speculation from Independent.co.uk that it would launch a UK-facing edition.