IAC Combines About.com and the Daily Beast to Impress Wall Street and Advertisers

Barry Diller would like to sell you a Web ad.

That’s one of the motivations behind a corporate shuffle at Diller’s IAC holding company, which is combining several of its websites into a new publishing unit.

The idea: By linking the sites together operationally — and by highlighting them for investors and advertisers — IAC can increase the chances that advertisers will want to spend money on the sites, and that Wall Street will give IAC more credit for the sites.

The practical details won’t mean much to you unless you work at IAC, invest in IAC or buy ads from IAC. But for the record: IAC is moving About.com and some other sites that had previously been held in the company’s “Search & Applications” segment, and combining them with its Daily Beast news site. Doug Leeds, who had been running Ask.com for IAC, will head up the new group.

Leeds says the combined sites will reach more than 100 million Web users a month, a pitch designed to get the attention of Web marketers who want properties with the ability to put really big ad buys to work. But Leeds also says his group will get bigger via acquisitions; likely deals include properties in health, investing and other search-friendly topics like travel.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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