• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 17, 2013

Ending the year on a high note, Tremor Video has been named Meredith Corp’s exclusive third-party ad provider for unsold desktop pre-roll inventory.

Per the deal, Meredith Digital’s video inventory on sites from Allrecipes.com to BHG.com to Parents.com will now only be available through Tremor and Meredith Digital’s sales teams.

Andy Wilson, chief digital officer at Meredith, said Tremor stood out from the crowd.

“Tremor was able to separate from the competition by providing quality advertisers at a premium CPM, which matched the quality of our audience and brands,” Wilson said on Tuesday.

As for inventory, Wilson said: “We expect to average 40-50 million video streams per month in 2014 across our sites and in syndication.”

Meredith currently offers thousands of digital videos across its portfolio of women’s sites on a variety of topics, including lifestyle, entertaining, cooking, home décor and healthy living.

For Tremor, the deal offers some much needed good news. Indeed, at risk of becoming a cautionary tale for startups eyeing IPOs, Tremor has had a tough year since going public in June.

Tremor saw its stock tank right out of the gate. Then, in November, the company’s stock took another dive, following lackluster third-quarter earnings and an even less impressive fourth-quarter outlook.

In a report released in November, Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser predicted rough times ahead for Tremor and rival online video ad networks.

Among other threats to Tremor and its techie peers, Wieser cited Google’s agreement with Nielsen to begin tagging YouTube-based ad campaigns, so audiences can be measured via Nielsen’s Online Campaign Ratings service.

Making matters worse, earlier this month, the San Diego-based Shareholders Foundation filed a lawsuit against Tremor for allegedly failing disclose clear threats to its business before going public this summer.

Not Tremor’s first dance with Meredith, the company has been one of several video ad networks filling the publisher’s remnant video inventory over the past two years.

The exclusive Meredith partnership is scheduled through the end of 2014.