• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 12, 2009

Condé Nast Digital on Thursday announced the beginning of a broad distribution partnership with video hub Hulu.

"This is another opportunity to extend the reach of our brands," said Richard Glosser, executive director of emerging media at Condé Nast Digital.

The agreement enables the Condé Nast Digital sites--including Style.com, Epicurious.com Wired.com, Men.Style.com, and Vogue.TV--to distribute video content via Hulu and its distribution partners, including AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo.

By the end of the year, Glosser estimated that at least another six Condé Nast Digital properties would be added to the Hulu partnership.

Hulu is selling the advertisers that will accompany the Condé Nast content, while the partners have agreed to share the resulting ad revenue.

With regard to Hulu taking the lead on ad sales, Glosser said: "They seem to be doing pretty well in that area."

Hulu--the joint video venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.--has so far seen success by focusing on long-form professional content. In November alone, it drew over 22 million unique viewers who spent an average of two hours on the site over the course of the month, according to Nielsen VideoCensus.

The hub, however, is facing greater competition from rivals. In particular, TV.com--the CBS-owned destination for full-length video--posted a 263% increase in unique viewers in January, along with a 1,261% increase in streams and a 4,435% increase in minutes viewed, according to Nielsen VideoCensus.

TV.com does feature Hulu content, and while Hulu does not yet feature TV.com fare, CBS head Leslie Moonves--at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference late last year--predicted that CBS would eventually strike such a partnership with Hulu.

Under pressure to create greater efficiencies of scale, Condé Nast in January aligned its nearly 30 magazine Web properties as a single unit--Condé Nast Digital.

The alignment of assets came just over two years after Condé Nast seized operations and maintenance of its individual magazine sites--including Glamour, Vanity Fair and Portfolio--from CondéNet.

Other sites now within the Condé Nast Digital unit include NutritionData, HotelChatter, Jaunted, Ars Technica, and Webmonkey, along with individual magazine branded Web sites, and Brides.com.

This is not the first video distribution partnership for Condé Nast Digital, which has existing relationships with YouTube, Adobe Media Player, Sony Bravia Internet Video, and Verizon V-Cast.