Yahoo has been criticised in the past for neglecting its original core business of being a search engine, and it may experience more of that with its latest exapnsion into content publishing. However, it has described its latest partnership with CNBC as a key strategy to becoming a “premium media network.”

Yahoo already has partnerships with the likes of Reuters, the Associated Press and the Dow Jones, and will not negate on these because of the CNBC deal.

As part of the CNBC deal, CNBC will be providing stories and videos that will be featured on the Yahoo Finance pages.

Yahoo and CNBC will co-create original videos that will appear on Yahoo, CNBC.com, and mobile devices.

These in turn will be promoted on the cable channel.

Robertson Barrett, vice president of news and finance at Yahoo:

This partnership is a key step forward in Yahoo’s strategy to become a premium media network.

Yahoo Finance is one of the most visited business destinations on the Internet, and CNBC is the dominant business news cable channel in many parts of the world, so the partnership makes sense.

The new partnership certainly furthers Yahoo’s ambitions to become one of the top destinations for news and entertainment content provision on the Internet.

Yahoo even has a deal with Walt Disney Co’s ABC News to use its content, and to jointly produce journalism projects.

The partnership should increase both Yahoo and CNBC’s audiences across the Internet, and it should also entice advertisers to pay premium prices – with online advertising spend on the increase, this is a good thing.

Recently, Yahoo began offering a product that makes it easier for users to find information without clicking through to page after page of results. The browser enhancement, called Axis, alters browsers made by other companies to display search results in a more convenient and visual format.

Clearly Yahoo wants you to stay within Yahoo boundaries.

Currently, CNBC and Yahoo Finance have a combined online audience of more than 40 million people.

Kevin Krim, general manager of CNBC Digital:

We have really high quality audiences and we have great content.

Neither Krim nor Barrett would go into the terms of the multi-year deal, but confirmed it did include a share in revenue from advertising.

[Source: Reuters]