Yahoo: A bunch of donuts?

September 22, 2006
by Latitude

After Yahoo’s Dunkin’ Donuts promotional stunt and the search company’s stock-damaging failure to hit sales targets (not to mention the big, expensive London Underground campaign for Yahoo Answers), media man Jeff Jarvis offers this comparison of Yahoo and Google:

I’ll say it again: Yahoo is the last old-media company. It is dependent on the same dynamics — good and bad — as other media companies: the high value but difficulties of direct sales to agencies; the cost of acquiring users; the vulnerability to larger market trends; the high cost of owning content.

Google, on the other hand, just rides atop the waves, wherever they go. So far, at least, it does not tie itself to the old models of owning (or licensing) content or getting value only out of bringing people to its site.

The successful media companies of the new age will be the ones that enable media wherever it wants to be.