Yahoo Brand-Ad Revenues To Grow 21% in 2007
12.01.2006
Merrill Lynch projects Yahoo’s “branded revenue” will grow 21% next year (see Mediapost). How Merrill Lynch gets there is interesting:
“That estimate assumes 6% growth in page views and 8% growth in monetization for premium inventory, and 32% page view growth and a 31% increase in monetization for non-premium pages.“
The slowest area of growth — ie, the biggest hurdle to more impressive growth — is that piddly 6% growth in premium-content pageviews. Yahoo’s M&A crew will have a busy year, I guess!
On Yahoo! and branding: Yahoo! launched a platform dedicated to the Wii (http://wii.yahoo.com/) yesterday - they plan to launch approx. 1000 branded platforms in 2007. I think they are “finally” onto something, and have understood:
1) that they to capitalize on an effective integration of their different services;
2) that they cannot be “second best” in numerous markets but need to innovate in a new year, aim to be leaders in this by generating unique value on which other services can then leverage
3) I feel “branding 2.0″ is a great place to start exploring, innovating and investing in, as it will be on the most prosperous markets, and will also compete with more “traditional” markets, such as text-based/image/video ads in time.