New Media Scales the Summit

Attendees of this week’s CTAM Summit in Boston may wonder, why are two senior executives from MySpace.com and Yahoo Inc. scheduled to speak at a cable marketing conference?

With cable operators and programmers looking to boost revenue via Internet content distribution, organizers said it was important to broaden the scope of the annual confab to include players from the new-media space.

“There’s been a whole lot of discussion about the importance of new partnerships,” said Char Beales, president and CEO of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing.

MySpace.com chief marketing officer Shawn Gold is scheduled to give a keynote address at the CTAM Summit on July 18, at 11:45 a.m. Cammie Dunaway, Gold’s counterpart at Yahoo, will be featured at the closing general session Wednesday afternoon.

Beales said cable executives want to reach out to marketers in other fields who’ve succeeded in building global brands, both to determine whether to form partnerships with those brands, or to learn how companies like MySpace.com have been able to attract such a key, young demographic.

Yahoo is a veteran at working with marketers of high-speed access to the Internet. The Internet-services giant has signed deals with SBC Communications Inc. (now AT&T Inc.), Verizon Communications Inc., British Telecom and Rogers Canada to supply content for their broadband Web portals.

Cable marketers “tended to play in their own little silos,” said Rogers chief strategy officer Mike Lee. But in the current market, one day a vendor is a competitor, the next it’s a partner.

“We’re all broadening our portfolios, all the lines are blurring,” Lee added. “We need to take the opportunity to partner with companies with similar objectives.”

Lee said he’s looking forward to hearing the best practices utilized by Yahoo and MySpace at the Summit.

“The Yahoo brand is phenomenal, and MySpace is a brand that came out of nowhere,” he said.

News Corp. acquired MySpace.com in July 2005 for $580 million in cash.

Founded in 2003, MySpace.com has quickly become one of the most popular sites on the Web. The social networking site, which draws most of its traffic from teens, allows users to build profiles and share music and videos.

News Corp. has used its TV networks to boost traffic on MySpace.com, including a move earlier this year to tout the Web site by having “The Carver”, a character on the FX hit Nip/Tuck, create a profile on the site that was touted in TV spots.

According to Internet traffic firm Hitwise, MySpace.com became the No. 1 individual Web site in the United States for the week ending July 8, accounting for 4.46% of U.S. Web traffic.

Yahoo! Mail (mail.yahoo.com) drew 4.42% of Web traffic, and Yahoo’s main Yahoo.com portal pulled 4.25% of Web traffic.

With Yahoo’s various Web sites, combined, it remains the top Web company, drawing more traffic than rival Google (3.89%), MSN.com (1.92%) and eBay (1.59%), according to Hitwise.

Founded in 1994, Yahoo built a business by creating one of the first Internet search engines, which allowed Web surfers to quickly find sites by typing text into a search box.

While rival search company Google Inc. has relied on offering a simple interface that places its search box front and center, Yahoo has used a portal approach to designing its Web site, offering dozens of links on its main pages to sections that focus on news, finance, sports, TV, weather and e-mail.

Yahoo, like rivals Google and AOL, has also added more video content to its site in the last two years, following its 2004 hiring of former ABC Entertainment Group chairman Lloyd Braun.

Most of Yahoo’s video content comes from third-party suppliers such as the Associated Press, Reuters and Cable News Network. But the company has also stepped up its efforts in the last year to develop original programming.

Last year, Yahoo hired former CNN and NBC News correspondent Kevin Sites to file Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone videos for its Web site.

Yahoo also recently launched a daily show called The 9 (http://9.yahoo.com/), which features an attractive newsreader telling the day’s top stories.

Cablevision Systems Corp. executive vice president of product management and marketing Patricia Gottesman said she sees both Yahoo and MySpace.com as companies that are complementary, not competitive, to cable. Both increase the usage and enjoyment of the Internet, and that is beneficial to operators as high-speed data connection suppliers.

She said she also hopes to hear about Yahoo’s plans for interactive advertising.

“Yahoo! is fundamentally interested in changing the future of advertising,” she said, “as are we.” Both cable and the Internet companies are interested in seeing the advertising experience mutate from simply viewing to a buying experience.

“There are probably ways we can figure out to do that together,” she said.

Cablevision has no current partnerships with either Yahoo! or Myspace.com.