Crain's currently has a piece up about The Daily Beast's advertising plan, or apparent lack thereof. The article reports that Tina Brown and company have yet to seriously pursue any ad deals -- the site has been primarily ad free since it launched -- and instead appear to be counting on the deep pockets of Beast backer Barry Diller.

At a panel in January Beast general manager Caroline Marks touched on the topic saying the site was "in a stage of evolving ad and sponsorship, and that "The Beast isn't an open ended thing -- there is a realistic time frame...Barry [Diller] runs businesses we are expected to run ourselves as a business."

During a talk in February, Brown herself addressed the matter saying the Beast wanted to "create interesting looking advertising models, and places to do it on our site, and we want it to be as strongly and stylishly designed as the rest of it."

So where do things stand at the moment?

We've been informed by someone with knowledge of the situation that the site currently has a major advertising deal in the works and has been actively taking meetings with brands and media buyers alike. They also noted that traffic expectations (internal analytics have them far ahead of publicly reported figures) are also way ahead of expectations.