Tony Blair and Ricky Gervais to Blog for New UK Edition of The Huffington Post
Popular US news and blogging site The Huffington Post has now launched a UK version, with LG and Dell as its first advertisers.
The move is part of AOL's strategy to reposition itself as a key online destination for female audiences and follows their £197m ($315m) acquisition of The Huffington Post in March.
According to Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief of AOL's Huffington Post Media Group, the UK launch is aimed at further positioning their platform as a hybrid between a blogger site and traditional news source.
The UK edition will feature premium ad formats, including video, under its new offering of ad packages called Project Devil. In addition, the new site will include high profile bloggers such as Tony Blair, Jeremy Hunt and Ricky Gervais.
AOL's senior VP for Europe, Kate Burns, commented: "We're giving people the chance to write, share and debate opinions, creating a democratic site that can give Joe Bloggs the same platform as Ricky Gervais."
Regarding the debut advertisers thus far, the LG campaign was brokered by media agency Mindshare, while the Dell campaign was negotiated by WPP-owned MediaCom.