Yahoof!
Yahoo announced disappointing ad revenue growth for automotive and financial services today, kicking its stock in the groin.
This comes as Yahoo also announces a big and expensive marketing push: Dunkin’ Donuts for all.
I’ll say it again: Yahoo is the last old-media company. It is dependent on the same dynamics — good and bad — as other media companies: the high value but difficulties of direct sales to agencies; the cost of acquiring users; the vulnerability to larger market trends; the high cost of owning content.
Google, on the other hand, just rides atop the waves, wherever they go. So far, at least, it does not tie itself to the old models of owning (or licensing) content or getting value only out of bringing people to its site.
The successful media companies of the new age will be the ones that enable media wherever it wants to be.
Tags: distributed, google, Internet, Media, yahoo
September 19th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Here’s an exercise you can try at home.
Make a paper investment in Google and Yahoo stocks as of today’s close. “Invest” equal amounts of money into each.
See where they are in, say, a year from now. Just for the record Google P/E is 59. Yahoo P/E is 30. Normal range these days is 15-20 for “dynamic” companies.
One of the laws of investing is that companies tend to drift towards the mean. That means if they have recently had a large run up the chances are they will decline in price and vice versa.
To make the comparison even better pick a mainline company of your choice and track that as well. I suggest something like GE.
September 21st, 2006 at 10:53 am
[...] What they did do is create a small and uncompelling collection of videos — a few made by them, a few made by others — about things like driving and flying. Why? Because there are ad dollars there (well, in the case of automotive, there aren’t as many ad dollars from automotive as they may have thought). Making money is fine. But when I saw a button called “action” on Yahoo’s Current, I thought it might be about taking action in the country and the goverment. No, it’s about going fast. Odd, considering how going fast on the ground or above does have an impact on global warming. [...]
September 23rd, 2006 at 4:46 pm
I think Yahoo has realized it’s riding the last part of the wave it was riding and is broadening their scope, like snapping up webjay as an example. Many of these companies get so large that they are afraid to make a change, and change is what the internet is about, anyone remember Altavista? So far, google has been the one to beat, and they are still looking forward by encouraging API’s and their recent launch of google code, they have kept with the fact that as much as you try to contain the internet, it just wants to be free. Google may need to watch out for sites like Technorati and Digg, because they are part of the new generation of finding things on the net.
October 27th, 2006 at 1:22 am
Yahoo, it has to learn many lessons from “Big G”. But as a small business and custom web site development company owner my favorite is still yahoo. Becs it is giving big support to small business owners.