Yahoo, MSN Ready Olympic Coverage

Yahoo doesn't plan to be left out in the cold when it comes to capitalizing on the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver. In addition to launching dedicated Web and mobile sites for the Games, Yahoo is setting up an entertainment center in the host city to run promotions and events.


The Olympic site from Yahoo Sports features extensive coverage of the event led by writers Dan Wetzel, Charles Robinson, and Martin Rogers. Yahoo has also lined up a team of ex-Olympians as contributors including 1998 figure skating silver medalist Elvis Stojko and 1996 gold-medal gymnast Dominique Dawes.

The latter will host a daily video recap of top stories and preview upcoming Olympic events. Yahoo will also have its own custom-built studio in Vancouver.

Other specialized content will include "Fourth-Place Medal," an Olympics blog authored by Yahoo Sports editors Chris Chase and Greg Wyshynski.

The mobile site, which debuts February 9, will provide the latest Olympics news, including medal counts, live results and athlete profiles.

Through its "Fancouver" entertainment center, Yahoo will offer Olympics visitors a free Wi-Fi lounge, photo booth, live video streaming "fan-cam" and games and giveaways. Yahoo is also running a sweepstakes in which fans starting Jan. 25 can submit their favorite winter sports photos for a chance to win prizes ranging from digital cameras to a trip to the U.S. Freestyle Skiing Championship at Squaw Valley, Calif. in March.

Acura is co-sponsoring the Olympic site, while Visa is sponsoring the medal count, athlete pages and mobile coverage as well as offering discounts in the Yahoo Sports Store.
Yahoo isn't the only Web portal providing coverage of the Vancouver Olympics. With its longstanding ties to Winter Olympics broadcaster NBC Universal, MSN has claimed the title of "official U.S. online home of the 2010 Winter Olympics." Following up their partnership on the Beijing Olympics last summer, the two have again launched NBCOlympics.com on MSN, promising live video streaming and more than 1,000 hours of on-demand coverage courtesy of Microsoft's Silverlight media player.

The Silverlight player also offers related data including results, statistics, bios, and rules.

Yahoo Lets Search Marketers Import AdWords Campaigns

To help grease the wheels for new advertisers, Yahoo will announce today that paid search players will soon be able to import their Google AdWords files to run similar campaigns on Yahoo's platform. The feature will be available to its business customers in less than two weeks, according to David Pann, VP of Yahoo's search advertising division.

Campaign data that will be transferable involves mainly keywords and phrases, Pann said, while elements like geo-targeting, demographic targeting, and day-parting can be selected after the fact. He characterized the import feature as a potential accounts builder that will make it easier for Google marketers to get started on Yahoo.

Pann said advertisers have consistently expressed interest in a more streamlined way of applying their Google-based strategies on the Yahoo platform. But Yahoo may also be gearing up for the final phase to its agreement to integrate with Microsoft's adCenter platform.

According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the platform -- which includes the upstart search site, Bing -- has allowed advertisers to import Google AdWords campaigns into adCenter for two years. The Yahoo-Microsoft deal is pending approval from the U.S. Justice Department -- though most industry watchers expect it to go through sometime this year.

In the meantime, reaching out to Google advertisers appears to make perfect business sense for Yahoo. Because it's hard to fathom SEM players migrating away from Yahoo to Google -- where nearly all of them are already advertising -- due to the import feature, it looks like a move that will help encourage ad money to flow to Yahoo.

Additionally, the Sunnyvale, CA-based company's search division is set to announce a distribution feature that lets advertisers adjust their bids up or down within its network. Bids can be adjusted for Yahoo sites and its partners' sites, individually, as well as both entities at the same time. Like with the import feature, Pann said, feedback led to this development.

"It's something that our advertisers have been asking about for a couple of years now," he explained. "What it allows them to do is create a campaign, price it, target it, and put the appropriate message around it...It gives the advertisers complete control over the messaging and pricing for every click that they get in our marketplace."

B minus for new Yahoo boss Carol Bartz

Carol Bartz, Yahoo's new chief executive, today said she would only give her first year in charge a “B minus” because of the length of time it took to strike a web search collaboration deal with Microsoft.

She also said her reorganisation of the business had been slower than hoped. Ms Bartz is struggling to keep Yahoo relevant as Google, Twitter and Facebook rule supreme.

Yahoo Fidgets With Its Widgets For Television

By Ben Charny

Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

LAS VEGAS (Dow Jones)--For a peek at how televisions might connect to the Internet in the future, take a look at Yahoo Inc.'s (YHOO) widget engine.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet giant announced it had signed deals to embed its technology in microprocessors made by MIPS Technologies Inc. (MIPS) and Sigma Designs Inc. (SIGM), whose products are used primarily by television manufacturers.

Yahoo's technology works like a bridge between Web sites and television screens, allowing Internet content to be rendered correctly on displays designed for living rooms rather than desktops. To make the widget engine more compelling, Yahoo has also struck deals with streaming-video aggregators Brightcove Inc. and Zeevee Inc., which offer hundreds of online video channels.

"We've opened the spigot to an endless amount of content," said Russ Schafer, a senior director who helps oversee Yahoo's widget project. Schafer said more televisions containing widget technology will hit electronics showrooms throughout the year.

Whether couch potatoes will turn on the digital tap Yahoo has created remains an open question. While the Web opens up vast archives of streaming video, manufacturers are convinced television viewers don't want to replicate the experience of using a laptop on a wall-sized television and have avoided adding features, such as Web surfing, to their products.

"I don't think anyone can seriously say they know what the next killer app is," said Scott Smyers, chairman of Digital Living Network Alliance, which represents makers of software that networks home electronics.

While consumers have expressed interest in Web-enabled televisions, what they actually use complicates the matter, industry executives say. In Singapore, the top Internet feature accessed by television is weather news even though the island nation's climate rarely changes because it is so close to the equator, said Tracy Geist, senior vice president of business development and marketing for OpenTV Corp. (OPTV), which provides software for Internet-enabled TVs.

Meanwhile, no one has figured out how best to make money from Internet features delivered over televisions. Ideas have ranged from selling ads to selling subscriptions. Yahoo is mulling a model that makes many sites free but offers premium sites at a subscription.

Yahoo is trying to push its widgets as an industry standard. At CES, the company said it was opening its developers kit--the software tools needed to make Web-based features compatible with its widget technology--to all comers. That sets the stage for distributing widgets via software bazaars such as Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) App Store, which offers free and for-pay programs for its iPhone smartphone.

Still, skepticism remains.

"We're extremely positive about the capabilities of connecting TV to cloud," said Nick Colsey, a vice president in the U.S. marketing arm of Sony Corp. (6758.TO, SNE), referring to always-accessible Internet service. "But what are those applications?"

CES: Silverman Inks Deal With Yahoo

Ben Silverman, the former NBC entertainment czar, now has his next dance partner: Yahoo.

Ben Silverman The head of NBC programming left in July to team up with IAC/InterActiveCorp for a new venture, Electus, to churn out original programming for the Web and other distribution points.

At CES today, Mr. Silverman announced the outlines of a deal with Yahoo to create original video programs for the Internet portal. The plans tie content and advertising, a hallmark of Mr. Silverman’s stints at NBC and as a producer of TV shows such as “The Office.”

Mr. Silverman and Yahoo said there’s enormous demand from advertisers for more online video programs with which to reach out to consumers. “I have no doubt: There’s a lot of demand for this,” said Joanne Bradford, Yahoo senior vice president and the company’s link to the marketing world.

One of the first Yahoo original programs, Mr. Silverman said Friday from Las Vegas, may be finance-themed, and will fit with Yahoo’s popular Yahoo Finance pages. The first wave of Web programs is expected to start by the end of March.

Yahoo has a long and complicated history with original video content deals. In 2004, it announced a much ballyhooed collaboration with former ABC executive Lloyd Braun, who left the company in 2006. More recently, the company has focused on generating less expensive original video content, including a show about celebrity fashion trends called “The Thread.”

Mr. Silverman wouldn’t give specifics about the new content, but he said top-flight people are champing at the bit to get involved with his Web video projects. “I think you’re going to see a floodgate of creative voices migrating to this platform.”

IAC and Yahoo declined to discuss financial terms of their online-programming deal, but Ms. Bradford said the two camps have agreed to split revenue.

Mr. Silverman jumped to IAC after two bumpy years at NBC that were marked by a continued slide in the network’s primetime ratings, and headlines devoted more to Mr. Silverman’s personal antics than to his programming prowess.

Mr. Silverman and Barry Diller, IAC’s chief executive, are big fans of one another. Mr. Diller had been an investor in Reveille, the independent production company Mr. Silverman ran before he took the NBC post.

Did Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz Grade Herself on a Curve?

Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) Carol Bartz gave herself a "B minus" when Bloomberg News asked her to grade her first year running the Internet portal. Later this month, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company's earnings report will provide more data to test that evaluation.

The number two search company is slated to report fourth quarter and year-end results on Jan. 26. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial are forecasting earnings per share of 11 cents for the quarter, down from 17 cents a year ago, and 2009 EPS of 43 cents, compared with 46 cents. Revenue is expected to fall 10.4% to $1.23 billion in the fourth quarter and decline 13.7 percent to $4.66 billion for the year.

Shares of Yahoo, which have been crushed over the past few years, staged a comeback in 2009, gaining more than 28%. Investors were optimistic about the company's Internet search and advertising deal with Microsoft (MSFT) and its ability to compete with Google (GOOG), whose shares gained more than 84% during Bartz's tenure. Data from Experian Hitwise shows that Google accounted for 71.57% of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Nov. 28, 2009. That's a gain of 1% compared with the previous month. Yahoo had 15.4% of the market and Microsoft's Bing platform had 9.3% of the market. Both companies lost ground to Google.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Bartz said she underestimated the challenges she faced when she took the job following co-founder Jerry Yang's disastrous tenure.

"I did move fast, but this is a big job, " Bloomberg quotes Bartz as saying.

That's an understatement. Bartz has to make Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo relevant in the age of Facebook and Twitter. Media companies still are not sure if Yahoo is a friend or an enemy as it develops more original content. Advertisers are also increasingly drawn to smaller, specialized niche sites that enable them to more easily target their marketing messages at lower costs.

Bartz has cracked the whip at Yahoo, shutting down underperforming businesses and slashing the company's workforce by 5%. Investors remain bitterly disappointed that the company failed to sell itself to Microsoft in 2008. The company has also redesigned its home page, giving it a less cluttered look. Some analysts expect Bartz to be able to bolster sales by 10 percent annually.

If she can revive Yahoo from death's door, Bartz will be hailed as a hero on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley for generations to comes. But she is nowhere near the point of success. Her one-year anniversary is next week. Yahoo's shareholders are in no mood to celebrate.