The much discussed NBC and News Corp video alliance will include Yahoo in its net of content distributors, and that is going to benefit the portal company.
Susquehanna Financial Group’s Internet analyst Marianne Wolk sees some solid positives for Yahoo and its participation in the anti-YouTube service being spawned by Peter Chernin and Jeff Zucker.
In a note to Murdok, Wolk said, “A partnership with NBC Universal and News Corporation should solidify Yahoo!’s position as a top destination for online video. This arrangement should position the company to benefit as the video advertising market begins to accelerate.
“This market is in its infancy, and we expect several players to benefit – including Google and MySpace – as nearly $3 billion in advertising is generated by 2010.”
Wolk suggested that Chernin and Zucker need to spur their respective companies to build an effective presence from the ground up for this new video effort. Each certainly has the content to bulk up whatever back-end is created to index it.
With distribution agreements in place with Yahoo, and AOL, MSN, and MySpace, we wonder why NBC and News Corp need to build a separate distribution site. If they truly need one, it seems more sensible to buy an existing site or partner with someone like Brightcove to quickly establish a back-end feeder to Yahoo and other distribution partners.
(Good Morning Silicon Valley’s fine writer John Murrell quipped about the proposed site: “It’ll be just like YouTube, only with less You.”)
Whatever they do, Yahoo should still come out ahead. Wolk thinks that Yahoo’s existing third place position behind Google and Fox Interactive (read “YouTube” and “MySpace” here) serves them well even if the planned site doesn’t happen as NBC and News Corp want.
“We believe Yahoo!’s audience of more than 423 million unique users and its place as a top 3 U.S. video site will position it well to leverage their content,” said Wolk. “We believe syndication to Yahoo! would persist in some format even if the consortium’s site does not reach its objectives.”
That consortium site needs to hurry up and select a name, if only to keep TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington from suffering needlessly. “Since the company is yet to be named, Google
