Yahoo Thinks Online Video is TV
February 20, 2008 by Mike Abundo
Filed under Computers
This is Rebecca Paoletti, Yahoo’s director of video sales strategy. The first words out of her mouth reveal everything that’s wrong with Yahoo’s video strategy.
We’ve really been focused on television-type advertising because the content we have on our network is very television-centric, so we have the largest online library of professionally-produced content today on the Internet. So there’s the YouTube world, and then there’s our world, and we’re very very focused on best-of-breed content producers.
She just doesn’t get it. What’s “best-of-breed” for TV — 30-minute blocks, no conversation — is not necessarily what’s best-of-breed for online video. What Rebecca calls the “YouTube world” is just online video content that actually works for the interactive widgetized nature of the medium.
I’m glad Yahoo won’t turn Maven into just another misaligned piece of peanut butter, but ads well-adapted to the medium cannot compensate for content ill-adapted to the medium.
No wonder Brad Horowitz left Yahoo. He was surrounded by old media types like Rebecca.
Actually, I think their strategy makes a lot of sense. Yahoo! is a portal, they’re the most visited sight worldwide and as such their core competency is delivering professional content to a mainstream audience.
Regardless of the medium it’s content that people are seeking out. If you run the world’s most trafficked site, content providers are going to want to syndicate to you.
And you can make more money selling ads on that highly desirable pro content than you can on the really long tail niche content in the “YouTube world” - at least until truly targeted advertising comes of age.
And here it is. ;)