Yahoo News booms with video

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on January 31, 2007 at 5:02 PM

Yahoo News generated 50% more ad revenue last year than it did in 2005. Apart from increased reliance on online news, this is explained by the inclusion of new video content. Something for newspapers to think about.

Scott Moore, Yahoo's head of news and information, said he expected ad sales to increase just as much this year.

Yahoo users watch about 60 million videos a month nowadays, compared to a mere three million in October 2005.

“The advertiser response to this has been phenomenal,'' Moore said. And Yahoo is now about to launch a redesigned version of Yahoo Sports, as well as its health site within the next two months.

“This is going to be a more graphical, suck you in experience,'' said Moore.

It’s not surprising that video content has energized Yahoo News’ revenues. Isn’t this the YouTube generation?

Meanwhile, most newspapers’ online editions still cruelly lack video content. Although it is the most common form of multimedia on a newspaper website, these still have efforts to make in that direction.

Source: Bloomberg.com