Verizon moves in for Yahoo leaving questions for local Seven affiliation
The $US4.8b takeover of Yahoo by US telecommunications giant Verizon, expected to be announced in the US this week, may have implications for Yahoo’s local partnership with Seven West Media Group, but all parties are remaining silent ahead of the deal.
Under the deal Verizon is expected to bring together Yahoo with AOL, which it acquired last year. In Australia AOL dropped out of the consumer focused online space several years ago, but is building its presence in the programmatic space.
Seven and Yahoo7 came together in the Australian market in 2006 after the network had made several aborted attempts to develop a web presence, including an early foray into the space in partnership with AOL under a platform called AOL7.
Eighteen months ago Seven was forced to write down the value of Yahoo7 by 50% and the joint ventures share of net profit was down 11.6% in the half year results released in January, slipping from $6.4m to $5.7m.
Yahoo7 has adopted a “MAVENS” strategy for growth focussed around mobile, video, native and social.
MAVENS now represents more than 50% of revenue for the portal, while native advertising revenue has lifted 400% year on year.
Last month Yahoo7 launched an ambitious new entertainment and lifestyle offering, Be, which Yahoo7 CEO Ed Harrison said would be celebrity driven. with content coming from an editorial team that had previously been devoted to separate Pacific Magazines titles.
Both Seven West Media Group and Yahoo7 have declined to comment.
At Yahoo!7, it is well known that that 7 West and Yahoo!7 are about to part ways.
Proof of this happening is simply, 7W expanding its own digital team. And the increase level of internal discussions at 7W to take-back titles from Yahoo!7…
Programatic enables 7W to sell to a bigger audience now, and they keep what they sell – no Y!7 commission.
As an exec looking for increase sales revenue, wouldn’t you bring it back in house if it meant keeping your job and an increase in sales revenue?!
Y!7 is looking around to see what titles it can create in the lead-up to what will be around 80% of its traffic & content moving out of the portal.
nine.com.au have gone through a recent breakaway from Microsoft.
If Ed Harrison can’t see this happening to his Yahoo!7 business, then I would suggest, they start looking for a new CEO.
Ed, your captain of a sinking ship.
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‘You’re’ please…
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