The deal includes Lagasse’s television programs, his library of a dozen cookbooks, the Internet site emerils.com, and kitchen and food products. Lagasse’s eleven restaurants and corporate office, called Emeril’s Homebase were not part of the transaction.

Martha Stewart Living is hoping to leverage its skill of creating celebrity brands to grow Lagasse’s businesses, which will run as its own unit within Martha Stewart Living the Wall Street Journal reported.

The company said the deal will "contribute immediately to our performance," bringing in $8 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. In 2007 Lagasse’s properties being acquired  generated $14 million in revenue.

The deal could be worth as much as $70 million if certain performance goals are met in 2011 and 2012. Martha Stewart Living said the deal is expected to close in the second quarter.
 

I overheard a startup that is making it easier for you to do that (hopefully we’ll get more on this in the next few weeks).

Martha Stewart is the latest to start her own ad network. It capitalizes on lifestyle and cooking sites that fit the Martha Stewart brand.

The network is called “Martha’s Circle,” and is forecast to generate around 20 million ad views a month. Sites belonging to the network include: Hostess with the Mostess, Charles and Hudson, 101 Cookbooks and Style Me Pretty. Advertisers include Ace Hardware, Bank of America, and Macy’s.

Example: Apartment Therapy’s site. It has five ad placements, and now two are from Martha’s Circle. The site earns money for the placements, and shares the revenue with Martha’s Circle. The other spots on the site Google AdSense ads. There are niche networks of all kinds and are said to convert at a higher rate because they are niche (highly targeted).

The advantage of working with an ad network is that you can monetize your bog or site with ads that match your content. It’s a win for ad networks as they can easily target a broad network of sites and blogs and work with one or a few networks rather than individual sites.

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Yahoo Sales Chief Joins Martha Stewart

Did Millard jump or was she pushed? Millard had been Yahoo’s chief sales officer, and a member of Yahoo for six years. Yahoo announced her departure in a statement, and the elevation of David Karnstedt to head of a combined search and display advertising sales unit.

The text regarding Millard’s departure in Yahoo’s statement bears the sort of clues that one of Semel’s top sales recruits had the door held wide open for her to exit:

As part of the reorganization, Wenda Millard, Yahoo!’s Chief Sales Officer in the US will be leaving the company effective immediately.

(Gregory Coleman, Yahoo!’s EVP of Global Sales) added, “While Wenda was a big contributor to our success in the past, the industry has shifted and requires a different set of skills to take the business forward. We appreciate her dedication during her years of service and wish her well in the next chapter of her career.”

A “different set of skills” sounds like a back-handed swipe when one takes a peek at Millard’s experience. This is from her now-purged bio on Yahoo’s management page:

A seasoned executive with over twenty-five years of publishing and advertising experience, Millard was formerly Chief Internet Officer at Ziff Davis Media and president of Ziff Davis Internet. Previously, she was executive vice president of DoubleClick, where she was responsible for establishing the DoubleClick brand and oversaw the operations of DoubleClick Media.

Here is what Paid Content reported on Millard’s new job; Millard has been a member of the Martha Stewart board of directors prior to this:

Wenda Harris Millard

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