Yahoo’s push to bolster its B2B offerings continues: It has got a new content deal with CNBC.com…
Yahoo! Finance, the most popular business news Web site, on Wednesday announced that it will begin to show about 20 video segments each day covering the current action in the market from the business news channel CNBC.
As per the deal, Yahoo! Finance will distribute content from CNBC, CNBC Europe, CNBC Asia and CNBC.com to Yahoo! Finance users in the US and worldwide.
“This is CNBC’s first global online alliance, and Yahoo!’s first global finance video agreement.”
“It has picked three hosts and the project will begin next month. It will allow the big financial web site the chance to give users breaking news from experts via web video, which has become a major part of the internet multimedia experience.”
The Yahoo! move makes sense because advertising sold in online video brings a premium to display advertising. If consumers watch the new programming, Yahoo! Finance can increase its revenue.
Now, Yahoo! has decided to double down on its plan. It has formed a partnership with GE cable channel CNBC to offer video clips from the network’s shows on Yahoo! Finance.
“Executives said the agreement would bolster Yahoo’s video options and enhance the visibility of CNBC.com.”
“We are bringing together the leader on television with the leader online for financial content,” Scott Moore, Yahoo!’s head of media, told the New York Times.
CNBC will provide video clips from its global networks and articles from CNBC.com. The content will also be available to Yahoo!’s 21 international financial news sites and will include comment and analysis on business stories, interviews, pre-market opening speculation and investing segments, among other things.
Commenting on the deal, CNBC president Mark Hoffman stated: “This agreement brings together two global market leaders to meet the growing demand for online business and financial information.”
It draws on the strengths of the channel’s global assets and expands the reach of its content to the worldwide user base of Yahoo! Finance, he added.
Yahoo! senior vice president and media head, Scott Moore said, "In an increasingly globalized economy, it’s essential that Yahoo! Finance offer investors news from the major global financial markets. The addition of CNBC video content will help Yahoo! Finance users from around the world make more informed financial decisions."
The alliance gives General Electric’s news network a larger presence on the Web just as it faces new competition from the Fox Business Network, a newly launched rival owned by Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire, News Corp.
News Corp. scored a coup in the financial news world with its surprising and successful acquisition of Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Murdoch has hinted that he will end subscription charges on The Journal’s Web site, signaling an aggressive push to expand its online reach beyond the newspaper’s traditional audience of sophisticated investors.
For its part, CNBC enjoys a content-sharing partnership with The Journal that it wants to keep in place through 2012, despite the News Corp. acquisition. CNBC’s own Web site has yet to gain much traction, but partnering with a major online news aggregator should raise its profile on the Internet.
Although CNBC is the dominant business brand on television, its Web site has struggled to gain market share. The site’s traffic has tripled since a highly publicized reintroduction a year ago, but it still averaged only 538,000 unique visitors in November, according to the company comScore, which measures Internet use.
“Yahoo Finance, which attracted 13.8 million visitors in November, will provide a much broader platform for the network’s content.”
Yahoo! Finance has almost 30 times the unique visitors that CNBC.com does, so the joint venture will give the cable channel’s programming a much wider audience.
The agreement calls for CNBC video and CNBC.com articles to appear on the Yahoo Finance site. Yahoo already distributes videos from some other providers, including the Fox Business Network, CNN, the BBC and The New York Times.
Yahoo! Finance is on to something here. The advent of YouTube and other video sites has gotten internet consumers used to seeing video. CNBC will produce the content that Yahoo! uses for its TV audience anyway, so there is no additional production cost. Whatever money each party makes from the deal is gravy.
Yahoo is also working on a related initiative: a financial news destination for technology vendors. Yahoo is aggressively going after some big names for the initiative’s editorial staff, including well-known bloggers and magazine columnists.
Meanwhile, Moore said: “In an increasingly globalised economy, it is essential that Yahoo! Finance offers investors news from the major global financial markets.”
Facing stiffer competition from two main rivals, MSN Money and AOL Money & Finance, Yahoo has made several recent moves to solidify its leadership position as a financial news aggregator. The site has added new content partners and plans to introduce an online program covering technology stocks next month.
“According to Moore, the addition of CNBC video content will help Yahoo! Finance users to make more informed financial decisions.”