Target Teams With Comcast’s Daily Candy for ‘Red Hot Shop’

Target expects to add some editorial oomph to its designer items by hiring Comcast’s Daily Candy to independently select and write about them in the “Red Hot Shop,” a new section of the Target site co-branded with Daily Candy. All the selected items can be purchased via a button to Target’s e-commerce shop. Target is paying the site as part of a broader ad deal.

It is the first news out of Daily Candy for some time. Except for the departure of longtime CEO Pete Sheinbaum this May, the site has largely gone silent since Comcast’s $125 million acquisition in August 2008. Besides Daily Candy, Comcast also owns Plaxo, Fandango, FanCast and Vehix; the company has discussed possible synergies between some of the sites.

Daily Candy is one of the premier publishers of highly targeted local e-mails, with 12 local editions of its daily e-mails and 2.6 million subscribers (a number that appears not to have been updated). According to a media kit, 95 percent read the e-mail almost every day, and the vast majority of readers are college graduate females with a median age of 32.