Yahoo Strikes Ad, Content Deal With Gannett

Yahoo Friday announced a new advertising and content partnership with Gannett that will allow the media company's newspapers and TV stations to sell Yahoo inventory as part of their digital ad offerings.
Under the agreement, Gannett's 81 newspapers and seven of its broadcast sites nationwide will be able to package Yahoo ad space with their own online inventory using Yahoo's APT platform for delivering targeted display ads. Gannett will also provide editorial content across Yahoo properties including the home page through the initiative that will roll out starting this quarter and continue into 2011.
The deal builds on the newspaper consortium Yahoo launched in November 2006 and now encompasses more than 800 members including The San Jose Mercury-News, New Haven Register and The Dallas Morning News. To date, the consortium has sold more than 40,000 ad campaigns onto Yahoo totaling more than $100 million in sales to date, according to Lem Lloyd, vice president of channel sales at Yahoo.
"It's really in the last 18 months that we've gotten this up and running," said Lloyd, acknowledging the time it has taken to get local newspaper ad sales forces up to speed on its APT system and selling advertising into Yahoo. With the Gannett alliance (which doesn't include USA Today), he added that Yahoo is now working with partners that represent 75% of the country's newspaper circulation.
The APT allows local newspapers to target consumers according to geographic, demographic and behavioral factors in ads that appear on Yahoo properties from mail to sports to news. "So now Gannett's thousands of local representatives can put together digital ad solutions that involve newspaper and broadcast assets plus Yahoo," said Lloyd.
And with local advertising accounting for about half of the $245 billion in total U.S. ad spend, Yahoo is keen to capture a bigger slice of the pie by teaming up with local media outlets. While applauding the deal, Gordon Borrell, president of local media research firm Borrell Associates, said Yahoo may find it especially challenging to work with Gannett's TV stations, since the TV industry is even less accustomed to selling digital inventory than newspapers.

"Television hasn't been as threatened by digital as newspapers, and so hasn't reacted as aggressively in adapting," he said, adding that TV stations typically have smaller ad sales staffs than newspapers to begin with.
Borrell also noted that Yahoo's newspaper consortium overall has been slower to roll out than expected. "We've heard from a number of clients that implementation has been a bit slow, so they're still holding onto the excitement of the deal -- but there are so many newspapers that wanted to jump on, it has left many waiting [for training and technology] and that's led to unmet expectations," he said.
Lloyd, however, emphasized that that on-the-ground training is a key part of the Gannett deal. "It's not our goal to work with every local media co. out there," he said. "We're more about strategic relationship and putting muscle behind that deal to make it work. This is a big commitment from Gannett and from us."

By Mark Walsh

Yahoo further integrates Facebook into e-mail app

Sunnyvale, Calif.—Yahoo Inc. has added a new feature to its e-mail application, allowing users to update their Facebook status directly within Yahoo Mail. The service will be rolled out gradually in “select markets,” according to Yahoo.

To use the service, Yahoo Mail users must link their Yahoo and Facebook accounts from within Yahoo Mail. After that, users can type a message within the mail application that will appear automatically on Facebook, Yahoo Mail or both. In return, Facebook profile photos that link to Facebook will be displayed within Yahoo e-mails.

Last month, Yahoo provided a way to import Facebook friends’ e-mail addresses into Yahoo Contacts.

Display Ad Recovery Bodes Well For Yahoo: Analysts Cite Auto, Finance, 'Price Integrity'

Reiterating an "overweight" buying recommendation for shares of Yahoo stock, the influential securities research team at JP Morgan this morning issued a report to investors suggesting that an imminent recovery in the online display advertising marketplace could be the "catalyst" for a rebound at the online portal giant.

"In 2009, one of the hardest hit Internet sectors has been display advertising. At Yahoo, owned-and-operated display advertising revenues were down 12% in the first three quarters of 2009 and accounted for roughly 25% of gross revenue in third quarter (and a substantially higher percentage of profitability). Thus, we think a recovery in display advertising dollars could be a catalyst for Yahoo's stock," the analysts wrote, noting that positive signs are mounting, including an improvement in key vertical ad categories, such as automotive and finance, which account for roughly 25% of Yahoo's online advertising revenue.

"Revenue from those two verticals was down more than 15% during the first nine months," the researchers noted, adding, "However, based on our industry checks, we think auto and finance advertisement trends are improving in the fourth quarter. Additionally we think the comps are getting easier. Therefore we think our owned and operated display advertising estimate for 1.5% growth in fiscal 2010 could be too conservative."

Another positive sign for Yahoo is the fact that big premium publishers are shifting their focus to "price integrity," which JPMorgan said should help bolster Yahoo's display advertising business, as well. Specifically, the analysts cited Time Warner's spin-off of AOL, and reports that CBS plans to discontinue selling its premium online ad inventory via third-party ad networks.

"We believe these moves by larger publishers will improve price integrity for the display advertising market as a whole," the analysts wrote. "Considering Yahoo is the largest display ad publisher, we see it as a likely beneficiary of pricing improvements."