Demand Media buys arts and crafts video provider

SANTA MONICA, CALIF. (AP) - Demand Media is buying Creativebug, a provider of how-to crafty videos, as interest grows online in arts and crafts.

Financial terms were not disclosed Tuesday.

Demand Media assigns thousands of freelancers to produce stories about frequently searched topics and then sells ads alongside the content at its own websites, which include eHow and Livestrong. The Santa Monica, Calif., company said Creativebug’s educational videos complement the crafts content on eHow.

San Francisco-based Creativebug allows users to pay per class or get a subscription for unlimited classes to learn skills such as sewing, knitting, jewelry-making and printmaking.

The purchase marks another effort by the company to boost the quality and variety of its offerings. Shortly after Demand Media went public in 2011, Google Inc. changed its influential search formula to weed out websites featuring content deemed to be shallow or deficient by its ranking system. The move relegated much of Demand Media’s material to the back pages of the search results that provided much of its traffic.

Demand Media has been adapting to the changes by producing longer articles and setting up its how-to video channels on YouTube and other online outlets. Meanwhile, interest in online video continues to grow and people spend more time in front of their computers than their TVs.

In addition, interest in crafts content is growing, Demand Media said. Last year 50 million viewers looked at crafts-related pages on its eHow sites, the company said.

Shares of Demand Media Inc. added 3 cents to $8.74 in morning trading.

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