ITV (LSE: ITV) has done a deal with MSN allowing the software giant to distribute video clips and other content from its forthcoming I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here series, FT says. It’s ITV’s first major online syndication deal since unveiling a turnaround plan designed to more than triple online revenue from last year’s £47 million to £150 million by 2010, and ranks as one of the most innovative things it’s done. The two will share revenue from ads Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) will place against the material, while ITV also hopes to get traffic linked back to its series site proper.
September’s turnaround plan, amongst other things, aimed to “syndicate our content to platform operators and content aggregators, generating advertising revenues, earning licence fees and driving traffic back to ITV.com”. Three quarters of the revenue is hoped to come from web display, video and local classified advertising. Who’s next? Speaking about syndicating content to partners at this month’s AOP conference, ITV consumer CEO Jeff Henry presented a slide showing logos of Virgin Media, BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) and others.