I’m always surprised to hear that Yahoo still attracts a huge number of visitors to its website. I guess I never really started visiting it, but somehow this collection of information isn’t what appeals to me—if I want news, for instance, I’d rather go directly to NYTimes.com
But, apparently that is just me… Yahoo is second only to Google in terms of visitors in the United States. They have the #1 spot for news, sports, finance, real estate etc… clearly, Yahoo is a popular site.
Yet an article (in the NYTimes, of all places) says that despite this huge number of visitors, Yahoo has not been able to translate that into revenue. According to the Times, this mismatch between profits and visitors can be in large part attributed to display ads! The articles says how advertisers care less today about establishing a relationship or partnership with a particular website, but rather they are more interested in advertising based on behavioral characteristics. These are best bought through ad exchanges offering the lowest price for users who meet the buyer’s criteria.
Yahoo still says display ads at a premium place directly to advertisers on its most visible pages—what are called Class 1 Display. The problem is that its Class 2 display ads- which are being channeled into ad exchanges- are not selling nearly as well and are at much lower rates.
Of course it makes sense that any advertiser would rather buy based on characteristics rather than a broad display ad. The characteristic based ads are going to be more targetable and likely more effective. I find it interesting that in the end, you can build a web site that gets an incredible number of visitors, but still be unable to profit off of that success.
No comments:
Post a Comment