The Daily Beast Launches Obsessed, a Sub-Brand Covering Entertainment

Politics and pop culture publisher The Daily Beast has launched Obsessed, a sub-brand with a distinct landing page devoted to entertainment coverage. The move marks the latest publisher attempt to capitalize on the rising consumer and commercial interest in the streaming landscape. The sub-brand will live on The Daily Beast website but differentiates by its visual branding and its exclusive focus on pop culture, including film and television reviews, analysis and interviews, said Obsessed senior editor Kevin Fallon. The section builds on the success of the Obsessed newsletter, which The Daily Beast launched in early 2020. The number of subscribers to the newsletter has doubled year over year in 2022, according to chief revenue officer Mia Libby, though she declined to share precise figures. The growth of the newsletter also coincided with a 40% rise in traffic to its entertainment content this year, and together the two data points encouraged the publisher to invest in the editorial expansion––the first launch of its kind at the company. To grow the section, The Daily Beast has doubled the size of its entertainment staff, growing from three to six full-time reporters in the last six months. By creating a dedicated landing page for the content, the publisher hopes to attract the marketing budgets of streaming and entertainment companies. Revenue from advertisers in the entertainment category has grown double digits compared to the same time period last year, according to Libby, and Paramount+ has signed on as the launch sponsor of the brand. “Year to date, we’ve nearly doubled the number of RFPs we’ve received because of Obsessed, and we have increased our average deal size and our close rate in the entertainment category,” Libby said. “We’ve always had an endemic vertical, but by investing in it and driving more traffic there, it becomes a place where advertisers want to be.” The proliferation of streaming services has led to a deluge of content, creating a need for a curatorial voice to help consumers navigate the new landscape. Publishers including The Daily Beast and TV Insider have sought to turn this inflection point into an opportunity, competing for upticks in traffic and advertising revenue in the process. Obsessed will live as a standalone section on The Daily Beast website and feature reviews, analysis and interviews. Driving advertiser interest In an effort to build up its nascent audience, Obsessed's reporting will not initially be subject to the same dynamic paywall that guards the rest of the website, Libby said. And although The Daily Beast is launching Obsessed as a standalone vertical, the publisher has been creating and tagging much of its entertainment coverage with the imprimatur since the newsletter launched. As a result, the immediate impact of the new launch will not be a novel content offering or a separate web destination––it will be the creation of a branded section that offers advertisers a premium environment to reach a specific readership. “We want to amplify a kind of content that we have historically done really well,” Fallon said. “Now, all of our entertainment coverage, including our signature writing style and unapologetic takes, will live in one place.” TV Insider Is Capitalizing on the Fractured Bedlam of Streaming