Crenk

Well im sure that everyone has already heard, but if not Microsoft has today withdrawn their proposal to acquire Yahoo! Yahoo have issued a press release and Roy Bostock, Chairman of Yahoo! Inc., issued the following statement today in response to Microsoft Corporation’s announcement that it has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo!:

“We remain focused on maximizing shareholder value and pursuing strategic opportunities that position Yahoo! for success and leadership in its markets. From the beginning of this process, our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft’s offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view. Yahoo! is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market. Our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 and increased full year 2008 operating cash flow outlook reflect the progress the company is making. Today, Yahoo! has:

– a refined strategic focus to drive enhanced volume and yield;

– reorganized to focus its efforts on its most promising products and services;

– invested in innovations designed to revolutionize display advertising and facilitate closing the competitive gap in search; and

– enhanced expense and resource management to support improved profitability.”

Here are also some of the thoughts from around the web:

• Techcrunch
• Venturebeat
• News.com
• Centernetworks

The soap opera that is Microsoft bid for Yahoo is continuing. Firstly it is reported by the WSJ that Yahoo is closing in on a merger with AOL. If the deal goes through, the two companies would combine their web and internet based services. Yahoo! would reportedly use some of the revenue from a merger with Time Warner/AOL to buy back a whole bunch of stock which woudl help the company fend off any further unwanted advances from Microsoft.

While at the same time it is reported that Yahoo has begun testing out Search Ads from Google. Then Microsoft hit back with the following statement about the search testing:

From Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel:

“Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands. This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo! We will assess closely all of our options. Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo! shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.”

Well, what can I see happening? I expect that AOL and Yahoo will potentially merge, but this it might happen in about 6 months time. In terms of search advertising between Google and Yahoo, im sure this cant continue because of the amount of marketshare they will have between them. Finally, Microsoft have no chance of purchasing Yahoo, I cant see it happening because Yahoo shareholders and directors would have already agreed if there was something that was going to happen.

More news from around the world.

Over the last few months the market of ad serving has really heated up. Firstly, it was the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google, which was really supposed to accelerate Google into the display advertising market. While at the same time Open X announced funding, basically so they could turn their ad server from self hosted to hosted and controlled by Open X. Then comes the very recent announcement that Google is launching Ad Manager. Finally, this week it was announced that Yahoo are entering this competitive market and are soon to launch Yahoo AMP!.

The overall fight seems to be about control and more importantly information. Google has always been a company that is hungry for knowledge and information, but it seems that everyone wants to know all about advertising, be it long tail or short. Each option has its own unique selling point, DoubleClick is for huge volume clients, Google’s Ad Manager is just simple to use (especially if they have Google Adsense as defaults), Open X has a great free service for self hosted companies and with the inclusion of a hosted option im sure they will see even more interest, then finally there is Yahoo and AMP!, this service has had amazing early reviews and im very keen to get my hands on it.

Thus, who will win this race? Well, it has always been hard to look away from Google, but I do think that Yahoo might be on to something here. Yahoo has a very strong display advertising business already, and if they make a Ad Manager that ties in hundreds of other ad networks and offers great transparency, then im sure they will be in the box seat.

The blogoscope has noticed that the Yahoo home page has a new shape about it. The design now has the Yahoo logo at the top of the page and placing more of a presence on the search feature of Yahoo. Is this a sign of the site slowly moving away from being a full portal?

Display Advertising Opportunity

Currently, Yahoo is a long way behind in several market, but they seem to have a great opportunity improve in this area. In the first slide attached to the previous article it states that the top 2 players control more than 90% of the search market, whereas in the display advertising market, the top 10 players only control less than 25% of the market. Hmmm. This being said there is a great opportunity for Yahoo to control this market as there are no real dominant players.

Additionally, I can see Yahoo taking a keen focus on the markets with very high CPM rates, such as classifieds, search and online video. The online video acquisition not too long ago of the Maven networks has now been justified.

Currently, Yahoo also has a strong presence in classified sections, in terms of jobs and autos, but there are more targets they could approach in this area. Craigslist comes to mind. The site is still currently owned by Craig Newmark with a 25% stake owned by eBay. This could be a potential target for Yahoo to quickly expand their growth in this area.

The second area which currently has a strong CPM is search. Yahoo is currently second in the search race, but are really a long way behind in search marketshare itself and more importantly being able to provide unique search sales services. This was supposed to come from the Panama service, but it has never really been upto standard. With the Panama system Yahoo estimate they can reduce the gap between the industry leading RPS and their own by 30% in the US in the first 9 months of 2007. I simply just cant see this happening.

CapEx and Investing:

Yahoo plan on investing aggressively and spending $2.6 billion cumulatively from 2008-2010. The are focused on Display Advertising, Grid expansion, relevance and experimentation. Hence, you will see Yahoo purchase some strong display advertising network in 2008-2010, my bet is a ValueClick purchase. Valueclick is one of the larger ad networks still left independent and they have a strong focus on display advertising.

Innovation inside Yahoo:

Im very interested to see how Yahoo Buzz progresses. It has been reported about a lot in the last few days about how much traffic the site is pushing and im keep to see this expanded, but not expanded too much. Quality rather than quantity.

Revenue Increase: Are They Realistic?

Yahoo is projecting revenues after traffic acquisition costs (TAC)—i.e., what it shares with other Websites that run Yahoo ads—to grow from $5.1 billion in 2007 to $8.8 billion in 2010. Yahoo also argued to its board that it could exceed Wall Street expectations and accelerate revenue-growth to 25 percent in 2009 and 2010 and increase its operating cash flow from $1.9 billion this year to $3.7 billion in 2010.

Are these figures realistic?? We can only wait and see!

Today, Yahoo filed a presentation which was detailed just before the Microsoft unsolicited bid. This three year financial plan was shown given by management to its board of directors back in December 2007. As you can see from the projections, Yahoo has project their revenue after traffic acquisition costs, which is what it shares with other Websites that run Yahoo ads—to grow from $5.1 billion in 2007 to $8.8 billion in 2010.

These slides come curtosy of Techcrunch. We will have our own analysis of these slides coming in the next few days, so stay tuned.

It has been a busy day in the race for Yahoo. Rupert Murdoch has officially stated that News Corp is going to fight Microsoft for Yahoo, and on the flip side the Time Warner Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes has said that Time Warner is open for a deal on AOL.

Talking to investors at the annual Bear Stearns Media Conference, Murdoch said that “We’re not going to get into a fight with Microsoft, which has a lot more money than us.” Murdoch also gave support to Google as FIM’s ad provider: “We’re very happy to be in the Google camp. They sell our search advertising and pay us well for it.”

Bewkes however acknowledged weakness in the AOL business and told the Bear Stearns media conference Tuesday that Time Warner was open to combining AOL with another company “whatever configuration makes it the strongest and the most valuable.” This being said, AOL booked $5.2 billion in revenue in 2007 with AOL properties receiving 112 million visitors a month.

So as the race heats up, who is actually putting in formal bids for Yahoo and will there be a merger, takeover, or nothing?? Only time will tell.

MyBlogLog has just implemented a new widget. Since the beginning of MyBlogLog they have had pretty much the same style of widget in which weblog owners could implement into their sites to allow them to see who is visiting their site.

It has been just over a year since MyBlogLog was purchase by Yahoo for $10 million. Since that time they were included into the Yahoo fold with the implementation of Yahoo IDs only 6 months ago, and now this change.

The widget itself has some new features but also lacks a whole lot of customizability, which the old widget offered.

Advantages

The new widget has more of a web 2.0 design to it. This makes the whole widget a lot more aesthetically appealing. Flyout orientations are a new feature which allow you to see more information about the visitor to your site in one simple mouse-over. It also gives you the options to add that user straight to your contacts. Finally, there is a main button towards the bottom of the widget which is for users to add themselves directly to your community. Previously, to do this it would have taken a user at least 3 clicks to get to the community page and sign up.

Disadvantages

There is only one key disadvantage to this new widget. No Customisation Options!! The widget only comes in seven different colors, in which the HEX colours cannot be changed.

Overall

The new MyBlogLog widget has a lot of good new features that were definitely needed, however when they allow the same customizability as the old widget, then they will have the perfect package!

P.S. Make sure you keep up to date with all the happenings on Crenk by joining our community!

I saw this very interesting post on Techcrunch and Arrington talking about the fate of Yahoo and competition Google. It is quite an interesting response.

Latest news around the blog-o-shere is that Yahoo Podcast is no longer. It has already been reported by RWW, Techcrunch and CenterNetworks.

Yahoo Podcast is a basic podcasting search, directory and listening service, which launched back in October 2005.

Marshall over at RWW notes, “Some would argue that podcasting hasn’t caught on like it was expected to, that it’s been dominated by existing media giants and beaten as a medium by the rise of video. I still love me a good episode from ITConversations, Briefings Direct or our own new show Read/WriteTalk when I’m walking the dog - but Yahoo! users looking for podcasts will soon have to look elsewhere.”

As mentioned by Techcrunch there are a few other podcast directories struggling at present. For example Odeo, which was acquired from investors, then sold, then acquired another directory called FireAnt.

However, the quote of the day for Yahoo is from Allen Stern over at CenterNetworks when he stated that he didnt argee with Marshall (RWW) and the real reason the Yahoo Podcasts are close is that the “The Damn Thing Never Worked!“