Gawker, a blog network similar to Weblogs, Inc., and Yahoo announced a syndication deal today that brings Gawker content to Yahoo News. Content from the largest Gawker blogs is already included – Wonkette, Gizmodo, Defamer, Lifehacker, and Gawker itself. More may be coming.
The financial terms are undisclosed, but here’s what is now on Yahoo: Gawker brands and content are pushed throughout the news home page. Clicking on associated content pulls up a Yahoo page with the Gawker content (example). It does NOT redirect to Gawker.
There is a single link to Gawker on the content page (clicking on the brand name). Otherwise, it’s an all-Yahoo experience. If I was doing the deal, I’d expect a revenue split in Yahoo’s favor on ad revenue generated from the page. Gawker gets that revenue, the branding, and some links directly to the blog. This is purely speculation, but my best guess.
Is this an important deal? Yes, in that it shows Yahoo embracing blog content. The guy at Yahoo to get to know is clearly Scott Moore, named by Wired in their last print edition as VP Content Operations. Scott is hiring bloggers (such as Kevin Sites) and doing these kinds of deals with Gawker. These are smart deals for Yahoo – they generate page views where they can put lots of ads. If the deals are revenue share, then it’s a no lose proposition for Yahoo.
But what Yahoo is noticeably not doing is acquiring Gawker, like AOL did with Weblogs, Inc. That means liquidity events for bloggers are limited – the GYMs (Google-Yahoo-Microsoft) are not yet in content buying moods.
So perhaps the networks and very large blogs can cut deals to increase page views on content and generate revenue. Will this model work for the long or medium tail of blog content? My guess is no…the GYMs will want to control quality and that doesn’t scale with more than a small number of blogs. But certainly we’ll see more deals like this, particularly as long as the advertising market is strong and demand for inventory is outstripping supply. The portals need content, and this is a cheap way to get it.
A lot of people are focusing on the fact that the deal is incorporating blog content directly into Yahoo news results. While I find this interesting, we’ve already seen Yahoo experiment with this with their blog search product. Clearly Yahoo is defining the definition of news to include blogs (as they should), and I applaud this.
But back to the title of this post. Is it an interesting deal? Yes, but mostly because of what the deal isn’t – it isn’t an aquisition of Gawker.
Read more analysis of the deal at Read/Write Web, Paid Content and Memeorandum.
Excellent post Mike.
Re: “Clicking on associated content pulls up a Yahoo page with the Gawker content (example). It does NOT redirect to Gawker.”
I (and everybody else) completely missed that. It’s an important point.
It is important, because it continues Yahoo’s longstanding media aggregation strategy, whereas the Kevin Sites hire was a shift to a media production strategy. It will be interesting to see if/when Yahoo decides to follow the Sites hire at some point with a few more production plays, buying content rather than licensing it.
Paul, They hired Kevin Sites as an employee though…they didn’t buy a blog/company. I think that’s an important distinction.
The GYMs are not yet in content buying moods?
Not quite true. Google snapping up Riya for approx $40 mil. Robbing Google and Yahoo, the only two plausible buyers. MS doesn’t buy, and Diller and Murdoch are in the market but for bigger and better properties.
True. Maybe they’ll hire you!
I respectfully disagree. This is the equivilant of Nirvana signing to Geffen…the equivilant of an open source startup selling out to Microsoft, etc…
Big media buying independent web content contributors has been tried in the 90s and rarely worked out.
Let’s not forget how great Slate was great before being bought out. Let’s remember MP3.com before being bought out. Let’s remember all the small Javascript/HTML/#SSI web sites before they were gobbled up by Internet.com. Remember pre-acquired About.com? And let’s remember ClickZ before they were bought up and later dumped by the company.
Meanwhile, Matt Drudge, Fool.com, Jim Cramer Street.com are still going strong and they are is able to syndicate their name out and great success stories. These successful guys are proof that selling out original web content is a dumb idea.
I suspect Gawker’s popular & pornographic ‘Fleshbot’ blog acts like a bit of a poison pill in these situations. Buy Gawker Media and leave Fleshbot open – bad publicity. Buy Gawker Media and close Fleshbot – bad publicity.
Wonder how the Weblogs Inc. – AOL deal would’ve went down if Weblogs had some more ‘exciting’ properties?
Riya isn’t really a content play so comparing its potential acquisition to Gawker/Yahoo isn’t apples to apples, no more than Microsoft buying Vermeer was.
My my…blogs all lit up, someone’s talking, I think I know who. But I had it well well before even the talker talked, however. Ask Tara, if ye not believe. Not that stupid stuff like this really matters, but just shows how actual reporting and not just a leaker leaking to blogs can win out.
Yeah, it isn’t quite apples to apples…but it’s a GYM buy-up at least.
“Jeff Rogers” point (4 or 5 up in these comments) is a rare bit of wisdom indeed, clever thinking.
I respectuflly disagree with Mr. Rogers’ comment, it would be shame if this had been a buy-out of Gawker BUT it is not as the post clearly points out. And THAT IMHO is what’s news. Kudos to Gawker for this clear sign of growing up and for showing once again that the blogosphere is here to stay.
Actually, using your example link (http://news.yah...2MwBHNlYwM3Mzg-), the four stories in the box on the left with the Lifehacker logo go directly to the Gawker property.
thanks
s