The company is teaming up with New York-based Everyday Health, one of the leading health advice networks in America, to launch local versions of its sites in the U.K. and Australia.

The first site, a British version of the pregnancy and parenting site WhatToExpect, is set to launch towards the end of 2012, with others to follow. It appears to largely be an advertising play, with RollUp in charge of managing the site launches, sales and marketing — but the two companies say there will also be scope for content development specific to each market.

“We are honored and excited to be working with Everyday Health, Inc. to achieve its international expansion goals by bringing two powerhouse U.S.-based brands to new audiences and advertisers in Europe and Asia Pacific,” said Ben Regensburger, CEO of RollUpMedia. “These sites will undoubtedly fill a niche in the growing advertising landscape abroad.”

Although growth in the U.K. and Australian online ad markets is not quite as strong as in the United States, they are still significant: British online display was valued at more than £1 billion ($1.55 billion) in 2011, for example.

It’s the latest part of Everyday Health’s expansion, which included moves into video at the end of last year with the appointment of former ABC News Digital chief Paul Slavin and an ABC TV series.

The company, which started out as Waterfront Media and merged with Steve Case’s Revolution Health Network in 2008, has. After raising more than $150 million in investment over the past decade, the company cancelled a planned IPO in 2010. International expansion could be one way to get those plans back on track.

That seems to fit smartly with RollUp’s platform, which is aimed precisely at allowing publishers in specific verticals to outsource the building of their digital businesses, as the company’s UK boss told Robert recently:

“We noticed digital publishers, especially in Europe, were struggling to build digital businesses,” UK MD Rags Gupta, formerly Brightcove VP, tells paidContent.
“Niche sites may have websites, blogs and a Twitter presence but they don’t know much about SEO and monetisation.
“We have built a platform that covers all aspects of content: creation, distribution and monetisation.”

Ruffolo comes out of left field — or more precisely, the home page team at AOL, where he was VP, AOL.com and Head of Current Programming until leaving for ABC News. (He was not included in the most recent round of layoffs.) His hiring is a sign that Sherwood, who recently returned to ABC News as president, is not trying for business as usual, something I would expect to be reflected in the other senior exec moves. I’m told Sherwood likes Ruffolo’s blend of content and business development experiences, plus the mix of his background at AOL, where he has been since 2000, and before that MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA). What he doesn’t have: much experience in news — online or network. I say much, not none, because he did a stint at CNN in the ’90s, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Ruffolo starts work Wednesday, less than a week after Sherwood sent out a late Friday afternoon email announcing that Paul Slavin, digital head since 2007, was leaving. Unlike Slavin, who worked his way up through network news over the course of 33 years at ABC News, Ruffolo has never been in the field, never covered a breaking story or produced a newscast. But ABC News should have moved far past the time when it needed a digital exec with news chops for that area to be taken seriously. In Ruffolo, Sherwood gets an almost digital native when it comes to business strategy and development, someone who has spent more than a decade working for one of the largest content portals. He hasn’t lived through the chaos of a newsroom but he did survive multiple regime changes at AOL.

His most recent role at AOL included managing video production for AOL.com and original video production across AOL. His personal credits include the web series You’ve Got…, a quick-hit open mike video series that has featured President Barack Obama, with a get-out-the-vote message, and a range of guests from Heloise to Dan Savage.

Update: In addition to Ruffolo, two ABC News alums are coming back to fill out Sherwood’s senior management team. Barbara Fedida is returning to ABC News as SVP for Talent and Business, while Susan Mercandetti rejoins as VP for Business Development and Partnerships.

More about Ruffolo:

Specifically, Joe will be charged with building on the success of ABC News Digital and charting a bold course to greater impact, reach and revenue. Joe is a proven leader, strategist and team player with valuable experience in key roles across the media landscape.

From 1996 to 1998, Joe worked on the team that helped build CNN Interactive in Atlanta. He earned an MBA from Emory, worked at MTV Networks and AOL, negotiating and planning online content distribution and licensing partnerships around the globe. He also played a leading role developing new programming and launching sites. Most recently, Joe served as vice president of AOL.com, one of top providers of news and information, and headed current programming. In that role, he managed homepage operations serving 15 million users per day and supervised daily video series.

And for good measure, carrying through with the alum theme, the announcement notes that Ruffolo ABC-6 in Providence, Rhode Island during college and The Walt Disney Company in grad school.

The three new execs have one thing in common: substantial experience outside ABC News. Fedida most recently was the top talent exec at CBS; (NYSE: CBS) Mercandett has been in publishing at Miramax and Random House. She has a CBS tie, too — she worked with Katie Couric on her just-released book.

Sherwood, appointed president of ABC News late last year, announced Slavin’s departure via a staff memo late Friday afternoon that mentioned his role in ABC’s new media efforts. From the memo:

In 2007, Paul took on a new challenge, steering our New Media operations to profitability and driving even greater usage and engagement for all of our digital properties including ABCNews.com, ABC News Now, mobile offerings and our award-winning iPad application. Under Paul’s leadership, ABCNews.com grew from 14th to the 7th most viewed news site. His team forged unique alliances with other companies such as Facebook and Yahoo! (NSDQ: YHOO) and positioned ABC News as a central player in digital news.

Slavin, SVP of ABC News Digital, was a senior exec for most of Westin’s tenure. Westin’s post-ABC News gig was unveiled Thursday; he’s heading AP’s new News Licensing Group. No announcements from Slavin yet. He’s at ABC News for a “transitional period after which he will pursue a variety of professional opportunities that he was unable to explore given his full-time duties here.”

What’s next for digital at ABC News? Digitial News VP Jon Dube took the buyout in last year’s massive re-org
and a trio of execs took on various roles, including Elizabeth Barrett as VP-Mobile, Broadband, and Operations for ABC News Digital.

It took months for Disney to announce Sherwood as the successor to Westin but I don’t expect this to take nearly as long. Look for more news from ABC News soon.

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June 3 memo from Paul Slavin

It

But that changed with the collapse in online ad growth. CNN has had some initial success with its paid iPhone app, which costs $2 per download and also features ads. At the same time, ABC (NYSE: DIS) News is going through a massive reorg right now, with buyouts offered to all non-union employees not under personal services contracts. By various estimates, ABC needs between 300 and 400 employees to take buyouts in order to avoid layoffs. The cuts will accelerate the network’s emphasis on digital newsgathering.

Slavin offered general outlines of his team’s approach to paywalls and premium, but no specifics yet. An ABC staffer since graduating college in 1980, Slavin has headed ABC News Digital for nearly three years.

While he insisted that advertising revenues are getting stronger and have met the division’s expectations, the realities affecting all online media outlets are the same, he said. “Things are changing and we need to seriously think about alternatives to ad support,” Slavin said. “And that will involve creating some mix of free and paid content for our digital content.”

paidContent: What kind of debates have you been having about paywalls at ABC News?

Paul Slavin: We