Innovations:
1. Strategic partnership with McClatchy providing access to global news and views
2. Strategic partnership with Virgin Mobile to provide Yahoo's mobile services to Virgin Mobile's more than 4.6 million customers
3. Yahoo! Mobile Publisher Services, a suite of services designed to enable publishers to increase the discovery, distribution and monetization of their content on mobile phones.
Summary:
Yahoo! and McClatchy: Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) signed a deal to feature foreign news from McClatchy Co. (NYSE: MNI) towards a project to be called "Trusted Voices”. This will put traditional news and feature stories as well as exclusive blog reports from McClatchy foreign correspondents based in places like the Middle East, China and Latin America on Yahoo's news portal, the most visited news site on the Internet.
Yahoo expects McClatchy's content to help satisfy that reader appetite, particularly by providing perspective on the news beyond breaking-news coverage from wire services, now the backbone of its "World News" section. World News is consistently among the site's three most-visited categories, he said.
McClatchy, which owns 31 daily newspapers, including The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, should benefit from a significantly wider online audience. -- Dow Jones Newswires
Yahoo! and Virgin Mobile: Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger will be available through Virgin Mobile's Email & IM offerings in early April 2007. These applications will be available for download on several of Virgin Mobile's handsets including the Switch_Back and Cyclops and will be preloaded on selected future phones. Yahoo! Mobile Web will also be prominently featured in Virgin Mobile USA's Surf the Web service beginning in April 2007. Finally, additional mobile services from Yahoo! will be available on Virgin Mobile handsets in the coming months, including Yahoo’s range of SMS services such as search and messaging.
Yahoo Mobile Publisher Services: Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network, Mobile Content Engine, Mobile Media Directory and Mobile Site Submit.
Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network
The Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network will allow mobile publishers to have syndicated advertising served on their mobile content and services. Publishers will be able to select the ad formats they want to have run, such as display, sponsored links, video or in-game placements.
Yahoo! Mobile Content Engine
The Yahoo! Mobile Content Engine will enable publishers to bring their content to Yahoo’s mobile audience. It will also help enable publishers who do not have a mobile site or only have a limited mobile offering to distribute their content to consumers on their mobile phones.
Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory
The Yahoo! Mobile Media Directory will allow publishers to make their mobile media content accessible directly through Yahoo! oneSearch. Publishers could submit a catalog of their content such as ring tones, games, video and applications.
Yahoo! Mobile Site Submit
The Yahoo! Mobile Site Submit will allow publishers to provide information about their mobile site, such as a description and relevant tags, to ensure that their sites are accurately indexed and available to consumers through Yahoo! oneSearch.
Insight:
Yahoo's World news content expansion beyond breaking news, providing global news to global audiences; Yahoo's mobile expansion in the youth and young adults markets where Virgin Mobile primarily caters to; Yahoo's expansion in mobile market by enabling publishers to grow their own mobile businesses through Yahoo Mobile Publisher Services.
Opinion:
McClatchy partnership: Yahoo News is the most visited news site on the Web with 36.2 million visitors in February 2007, up 37% year over year, according to research firm comScore Networks Inc. McClatchy's also has 6.6 million online news visitors, almost triple a year ago, before McClatchy purchased and began operating most of Knight Ridder's newspapers.
This partnership will further entrench global readers to World News on Yahoo News. It will also bring a cross-section of new newsreaders to Yahoo. It will not only further Yahoo News' leadership position, but also generate incremental revenue from global advertisers as well. McClatchy also wins through royalties that Yahoo will likely pay for "clicked readership" which in turn will fund McClatchy's foreign news division.
Virgin Mobile partnership: Yahoo! is consolidating and solidifying it's mobile leadership and strategy; Yahoo possibly won this partnership wherein both Google and Microsoft competed. Did Yahoo! pay Virgin Mobile to get included on the Virgin Mobile handsets, or did Yahoo! and Virgin Mobile create a win-win partnership wherein both companies are working towards shared revenues and shared risks? Yahoo gets a potential market of 4.6 million users, which is small compared to AT&T or Verizon's market of cell phone subscribers. Yahoo will need to create larger deals with the market leading wireless carriers in order to gain a solid footing in the mobile market of e-mail, messaging, search and more.
Yahoo! Mobile Publisher Services: The Yahoo! Mobile Publisher Services went live across 19 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, India, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, UK, US and Vietnam. Yahoo! seems to have scored a home run with the Yahoo Mobile Publisher Services. Will Mobile content providers embrace Yahoo! Mobile, and begin converting their content on Yahoo Mobile? Yahoo! is providing everything a mobile content owner can ask for: a ready ad network to monetize the content (first ads go live in Q2, 2007), a content engine to convert their content to mobile, and mobile directory and site submit. Yahoo! has partnered with MobiTV, the global leader in mobile and broadband television and music services, Opera, the leading provider of Web browsers for mobile devices, and go2, the leading location-enabled mobile content network in the U.S. By bringing together the global audiences of Yahoo’s popular mobile services with those of participating publishers, Yahoo! will create a combined pool of valuable inventory. Yahoo! wants to sell this valuable inventory to leading advertisers through its proven ad-serving technology...Yahoo is playing the right cards; now its a matter of time before the mobile content, search and ad business takes off.
