Verizon Leads The Pack Of Potential Yahoo Buyers; TV Reach Still Wins Over Digital

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Sum Of Its Parts

As of Monday, the deadline for would-be Yahoo acquirers, Verizon stands out from the pack of suitors, according to anonymous sources at The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile Comcast and Alphabet have withdrawn. Yahoo may be uniquely valuable to Verizon, as it gives the carrier another toehold in the search and email space (where there are precious few acquisition targets). There’s no single competitor that can claim bronze on the podium with Google and Facebook, but if Verizon keeps swallowing up the next tier of digital ad players, it may cobble together the scale it needs.

TV 2.0

TV still has the broad audience impact digital as a whole just can’t seem to replicate. “When we run a heavy TV schedule … [w]e need to run two weeks of digital to get the reach of one day of broadcast,” says American Express SVP Rich Lehrfeld in an interview with Jeanine Poggi of Ad Age. But on the data side broadcasters are making big changes. Turner ad sales chief Donna Speciale predicts by 2020 most of the network’s inventory will be sold against guarantees other than Nielsen. More.

Stuck In The Web

“Online publishers have faced numerous financial challenges in recent years, including automated advertising and ad-blocking tools,” writes John Herrman of The New York Times. “But now, there is a realization that something more profound has happened: The transition from an Internet of websites to an Internet of mobile apps and social platforms, and Facebook in particular.” Some digital media companies (BuzzFeed, Vox, Vice, etc.) are buoyed by big venture capital stakes, but there seems to be a simmering panic among the sites that haven’t hammered out revenue channels and now must wait on other platforms to ensure their sustainability. More.

Pay Up

Facebook is testing ad strategies for its Live video offering. Pre-roll ads have been ruled out, says Digiday, but the company and its publisher partners are keen on in-stream, mid-roll video and display ads. This wouldn’t stray far from the live broadcast TV model, where natural breaks dictate commercial opportunities. Facebook also hopes brands will pay to go Live themselves, which “seems to be a play to bring live unveilings, product sneak peeks and the like back to Facebook,” said Blue Derkin, associate director of social strategy at DigitasLBi. More.

IBM, Dark Horse

Speaking of “Live,” a TechCrunch post details significant moves from IBM in this area. The company purchased the live-streaming company Ustream and launched its cloud video service this year, and its nascent digital video division has signed AOL, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, Comic-Con and Mazda as early clients. IBM’s pitch is the infrastructure for live-streaming, as more and more media companies (not to mention individuals) move to Facebook Live, Periscope, Snapchat and other digital broadcasting channels. Read on.