NEW YORK - CBS (dossier) MarketWatch is about to announce a content deal with Conde Nast's personal finance site, CNCurrency.com, industry sources said Thursday.
The two financial sites will provide links to one another's sites, in addition to unique content, some of which they are already running in common. No money will change hands. A CBS MarketWatch official said the two companies had been in discussions since last December, and that the deal was scheduled to last for one year.
The deal marks one of the few times that Conde Nast has publicly reached out to another media company in an Internet venture (notwithstanding its purchase of Wired magazine this spring). Traditionally, Conde Nast has preferred to rely on its vast publishing empire to provide content for its sites, such as Swoon. However, Conde Nast has no magazine strength in the area of personal finance.
The CBS network and the Wyoming-based Data Broadcasting Corporation (DBCC) (DBC) jointly own CBS MarketWatch. In October, DBC registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a CBS MarketWatch initial public offering. Some industry observers, however, have doubted whether that venture will ultimately succeed, given general market volatility and recent high-profile IPO reversals by Internet firms.
CNCurrency.com is a multiyear, multimedia project of Conde Nast's. Earlier this year, preliminary copies of Conde Nast Currency magazine were bagged in with other CN titles to those magazines' subscribers. Conde Nast Currency is scheduled to begin regular publishing twice in 1999, company sources said.
One inside observer noted that the CNCurrency.com site is uniquely attractive to advertisers because, unlike many personal finance sites, its audience is heavily female (indeed, Conde Nast initially considered launching the title as a woman's personal finance magazine). The Web site often treats financial issues in a similar way to those found in women-oriented Conde Nast titles ("Careers vs. Relationships," or "For Love or Money.") Michelle Chaboudy, VP of marketing for CBS MarketWatch, said that approximately 70 percent of her site's readers are men.
Conde Nast does not release Web traffic figures for CNCurrency.com. However, a source inside the company said that the site gets "more than 1 million ad views per month," and that the number of visitors has grown by double digits since its launch in March of this year.
