Conde Nast Inks Deal with Hulu for Distribution

Conde Nast websites will begin distributing content via Hulu and its partners, including AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo.

The agreement with Hulu allows the publishing company to extend the reach of its brands, while Hulu will sell advertising to accompany the Conde Nast content. The partners will share ad revenue, writes MediaPost.

The Conde Nast digital sites that make up the partnership include Style.com, Epicurious.com, Wired.com, Men.Style.com and Vogue.TV. At least six other Conde Nast digital sites will be added by the end of the year. Conde Nast already has content partnerships with YouTube, Adobe Media Player, Sony Bravia Internet Video and Verizon V-Cast.

Hulu drew over 22 million unique visitors who spent an average of over two hours on the site in November, per Nielsen VideoConsensus. But Hulu is facing increased competition from TV.com, the CBS-owned destination for full-length video. CBS has repositioned and relaunched TV.com, and the site soared 263% in January in terms of unique viewers. It also saw a 1,261% increase in streams and more than a 4,000% increase in minutes viewed.

Digital media research group Screen Digest said that Hulu - with content made up of professional TV shows and movies - is likely to give YouTube a run for its money in terms of advertising revenue this year. In 2008, YouTube is expected to generate about $100 million in the U.S., compared with $70 million at Hulu, but this year both are expected to pull about $180 million in the U.S., the Financial Times wrote.