New York — Yahoo and Time Warner-owned Turner Broadcasting System Inc. have hit the ground forging a multi-year strategic content and advertising alliance for sports-related content — that will see them sell advertisements on Yahoo Inc.’s NBA, golf and NASCAR pages, the companies said on Thursday.
“Turner refused from dealing with another Time Warner web property, AOL, in favor of making Yahoo Sports its partner of choice.”
Under the terms of partnership, Yahoo Sports will gain access to live and on-demand video and editorial content from the official sites of several sports leagues, including National Basketball Association — NBA.com, the Professional Golfers’ Association — PGATOUR.com, PGA.com, and the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing — NASCAR.com, which is managed by Turner Broadcasting.
And, in exchange, Turner Network will be able to exclusively sell all display, sponsorship, and video advertising in Yahoo Sports’ NBA, Nascar, and golf pages on Yahoo Sports.
The deal is part of a publisher partnership scheme Yahoo began during the fall, which intends to create an interdependent advertising-reseller network.
“By aligning with Turner and enabling them to extend Yahoo inventory to sell to advertisers, we will engage the most targeted audience of sports enthusiasts available on the Internet,” Todd Teresi, senior vice president of Yahoo’s Publisher Channel, said in a statement.
“Meanwhile Turner now holds the exclusive right to sell all advertising in that content on Yahoo.”
“We concentrate on seeking out the best monetization opportunities for our assets,” said Teresi, who suggested Turner’s TV sales capabilities and bundled cross-platform offerings would help Yahoo get in on an otherwise evasive advertiser market. Because Turner has ad deals with the leagues involved, and has a hold on the ad market when it comes to their content, it makes sense for Yahoo to partner with the broadcasting company rather than try to compete for ad dollars, he explained.
“Our association with Yahoo! provides remarkable benefits for our online consumers, who will receive improved coverage of NBA, PGA Tour, PGA and NASCAR news and events. Aligning with Yahoo! Sports adds another dimension to our digital platforms and allows us to extend the distribution of content and advertisers’ marketing messages by leveraging each company’s national audience. We are convinced this arrangement will prove very beneficial to our advertising partners,” David Levy, president of Turner Broadcasting Sales, said in a statement.
Turner does not consider the deal as a snub of its sister Internet-service provider AOL because Yahoo gets more consumer hits on its sports pages than AOL. Also, the Yahoo deal is not exclusive; Turner is in talks to engineer a similar arrangement with AOL.
Regardless of other related content and advertising deals Yahoo has with publisher partners such as WebMD for health content, and CNET for technology content, Turner is now the sole seller of advertising in the golf, basketball and NASCAR content it distributes on Yahoo. The exclusivity factor is especially significant for Turner. "This helps us build our sports digital strategy… but also manage and control it," Levy said.
Although many of Yahoo’s publisher deals, including its deals with newspaper publishers, are intended at building up Yahoo’s ad platform as the primary system for those partners, that is not necessarily the case for Turner. “It can run either way,” said Teresi, explaining Turner will use Yahoo’s ad platform for things like behavioral targeting and forecasting, “but they are not replacing their existing standalone platforms.”
Nevertheless, Yahoo’s future looks a bit blurred thanks to the machinations of its investors and the potential of a Microsoft takeover, one might hope the partnership will fuel more sports reporting at the site. The interest in the golf side may suffer a bit as Tiger Woods rehabilitates his ACL instead of hitting powerful drives, but the Nascar and NBA opportunities for advertising could make up for Tiger’s absence from PGA events.