Yahoo! Mission
Scott
Moore is the Senior VP, News and Information at Yahoo! His presentation at the SIIA Content Forum
was one of the day’s highlights.
The
Yahoo! mission: To connect people to their passions, their communities, and the
world’s knowledge.
Just
as the web is evolving, Yahoo is evolving from a utilitarian focus on content to
an experiential and immersive focus on people and communities.
They
have shed their desire to be a destination site, understanding that “opening
Yahoo! to the web” and connecting their audience to others is far more powerful
– and, ironically, promotes a higher level of user engagement.
Yahoo!
firmly believes in the value of partnerships. According to Scott, most of their properties are built on partnerships
(quoting 80-90% of content on Yahoo as being licensed).
Some
of their partnering successes include:
- 60 Minutes – Yahoo! took segments from the show every week and offered short clips as well as out takes to their audience. This increased the “stickiness” of Yahoo! and exposed 60 Minutes content to a much younger audience. What they found was that the average visitor consumes more video on Yahoo! than they would have if they’d watched the show.
- Local News – There are 264 local papers in the Yahoo! News Consortium partnering with Yahoo! on advertising, content, and search. Yahoo! gets local content and the consortium members get national exposure and global reach. Currently this partnership yields $15M clicks/month to local news providers.
Scott
also spoke about Yahoo’s original content projects, their efforts to promote
user generated content (Fantasy
Sports, You Witness News),
and how they’re pulling diverse content assets together to create “brand
universes” (WII).
Ironically,
based on this presentation, it seems as though Yahoo! is being “less evil” than
some
other players!
Comments