After sending more than 100 million visits to partner newspaper Web sites across the country, Yahoo labeled its consortium a glowing success. But I'm not convinced.
When users are asked where they get their news, respondents in Media Audits all over the country repeatedly name Yahoo in large numbers. Given that Yahoo is a competitor, it's normally a bad strategy to give away your only competitive advantage, which is newspaper content.
People who depend on sites such as Google News or Yahoo to get information become loyal users because they repeatedly find what they want. Newspapers are complicit in the success of these competing news sources. If users could no longer get the most important news of the day on Yahoo, then they'd stop visiting. Eventually, they might consider your site as part of their daily routine.
A one-off link is no substitute for a daily routine, no matter how glowing the quotes are from the news release. Here are a few:
"It's very exciting when our news makes it to Yahoo.com's top features," said Anthony Moor, Deputy Managing Editor, Interactive, The Dallas Morning News, and editor of dallasnews.com. "It's like a firehose blasting us with up to 800,000 page views in just a couple of hours. We've had placements that have accounted for up to 27 percent of the day's page views, and 65 percent of the day's unique visitors."
"One of Media General's major initiatives is to grow audience in our local markets," said Kirk Read, President of Media General's Interactive Media Division. "Yahoo!'s multiple entry points, incredible reach and tremendous site content get the great journalism created by Media General reporters and producers before news consumers when, where and how they want it."
If these Pollyannas don't want to take my word for it, they should pay more attention to how Yahoo describes the success of 100 million links.
"Placing Newspaper Consortium headlines on Yahoo! has given our users access to some of the nation's highest-quality reporting, and made our sites more relevant than ever," said Scott Moore, Senior Vice President and head of Media, Yahoo!.
In a competitive world, if these links make Yahoo more relevant to users, then aren't newspapers less relevant?
Comments (2)
Hi Lucas,
I'm as skeptical as you are about Yahoo's gameplan here. There's a question here, though -- What's Yahoo doing with newspaper information that they couldn't already accomplish with the RSS feeds on newspaper-dot-com sites?
Joe
Posted by Joe Murphy | August 10, 2008 3:08 PM
Posted on August 10, 2008 15:08
Yes, Joe. That is very sadly true. Yahoo could have taken the RSS feeds from local newspapers and used them to accomplish the very same thing.
What's sad about this is that newspapers have sold their soul for a few links.
They have agreed to use Yahoo for job ads, Yahoo for guides, and Yahoo for site search -- complete with a free logo at the top of every Web page. You know how much that logo should cost Yahoo?
In essence, the negotiating weaklings who run newspaper Web sites have given up the store for the promise of a few links on Yahoo's home page, and the guarantee that the links from a competing publication won't be used in those geographies where your newspaper remains No. 1 in the market.
That's right. Yahoo isn't even willing to help you in outlying areas. If your newspaper isn't strong enough against a competitor in a neighboring county, then Yahoo just might partner with them, too. And you just have to take it.
I'm going to write about the stupidity of partnering with Yahoo on any of these propositions later on.
Posted by Lucas | August 11, 2008 6:57 AM
Posted on August 11, 2008 06:57