NYT, Gannett, Tribune report declines, Google up
Cory Bergman April 20th, 2007
All three newspaper companies experienced significant revenue declines as advertisers continue to shift money from print to the web. But the story here is the competition for those online ad dollars. The NY Times Company reduced its 2007 guidance for online ad growth, citing the advertising environment as “difficult.” Says one analyst, “There is stiff competition for internet advertising, and the transition (for newspapers from print to the web) will take longer and may well be less profitable than was anticipated.” This underlines the urgency for media companies to expand aggressively into new, local, niche internet businesses with high revenue potential.
Meanwhile: Google’s first quarter profit skyrockets 68 percent, beating analysts’ expectations once again. CEO Eric Schmidt said Google was “still at the beginning” of its core search and text-based advertising business, and he said the company expects its traditional newspaper, radio and TV advertising services to be big businesses by 2008.
5 Comments Add your own
1. David Johnson | April 20th, 2007 at 7:00 am
this makes yahoo’s dive earlier this week even more interesting. it certainly makes a statement about what wall street values.
2. Chris | April 20th, 2007 at 8:06 am
What is the better play? A technology company finding themselves in the media business, or a media company finding themselves in the technology business?
3. invitedmedia | April 20th, 2007 at 8:20 am
neither.
both will have to adapt to each other.
the problem lies in where one typically either “does business” with the other or sues them if things don’t go their way.
i’ll let you decide to which i refer.
4. David Johnson | April 20th, 2007 at 9:08 am
dunno, depends on what you use to define a \’technology\’ company. yesterday, i replied in the comments to the trib local post that web 2.0 is about providing online services. google is clearly working a strategy of providing advertising services (on pretty much all platforms), helping micro and macro publishers monetize their content in various ways using tools rather than putting all their eggs in the basket that focuses on retaining users on their pages.
yahoo seems to be pushing a strategy of mega content aggregation, as well as offering personalization, socialization, and other such services/tools to retain users on their pages. while google does offer similar personalization tools, they seem to regard them more as entrepreneurial experiments and their core search business is designed as a hit and run.
although they are online pioneers, yahoo is very reactive in the service space. if there is a myspace, yahoo develops their own knockoff version of it. meanwhile, google is growing new businesses the murdoch way, through smart acquisitions. yahoo\’s has had hits there too, though, such as flickr.
i wondered how wall street would react when yahoo announced the newspaper consortium deal. would investors and analysts find the equivalent of an online superstore of content attractive? seems like they have spoken for now, but time will tell if the long tail strategy and the megaaggregator strategy either compliment or conflict with each other.
as for the right now, clearly google is not so interested in making their own content, but they are very interested in helping you with yours. socially speaking, we all like people who offer us help, listen to us, and seem more interested in what we have to say than what they have to say. based on what we are seeing and hearing, google may be the most evolved and enlightened company from top to bottom, inside and out, anywhere in the world today.
5. ContextWeb Blog | April 21st, 2007 at 7:41 am
It’s too early to suggest is Yahoo is ‘done for’ but it certainly seems like they’re a bit slow on the uptake.
I agree about Yahoo ‘building knockoffs’ instead of smart acquisitions. I think they have made some lower dollar level such as mybloglog which are a step in the right direction. But as for big ideas.. they seem to have cement shoes.
John
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