Jupiter’s Prescription for Content Producer Success
Large portals such as Yahoo and AOL have continued their efforts to consolidate web traffic, as reported by Barry Parr, Lead Analyst with Jupiter Research, in his new report Living With Portals (July 3, 2008). While Google’s dominant search engine tends to send traffic to a wide variety of smaller sites, the portals are, in actuality, “portals to their own properties." Yahoo.com, for example, sends 67% of its traffic to Yahoo-owned sites.
This phenomenon tends to squeeze other media companies and content producers who are vying for web traffic. Large portals are thus a strategic threat to content producers, and are projected by Parr to continue to “squeeze the air out of the market”.
To thrive in such an environment, Parr recommends several strategies for content producers:
• Form vertical ad networks to improve advertising yields and to build portal-style advantages on a smaller scale.
• Form content distribution alliances with smaller content producers.
• Work toward a platform strategy, with open interfaces for content.
• Build search engine optimization best practices into all aspects of the organization.
• Seek syndication deals with portals, but simultaneously build traffic on owned and affiliated properties.
Content producers who implement Parr’s recommendations would benefit by working with Adify, the leading provider of white-label vertical ad network technology and services. Examples of networks who have already built vertical ad networks on the Adify platform can be found here.