I wonder what Dan Finnegan means?

Dan Finnegan, the former head of Yahoo’s HotJobs property, is quoted in the NY Times today saying this:

“Businesses like travel, shopping, music and even HotJobs were all great products, but none were going to make a huge difference in the fight with Google unless we used them to drive the main search business.”

HotJobs has been the main focus of the Yahoo / Newspaper consortium to date.  While, in the short-run, HotJobs did get Yahoo the ability to distribute search onto all their newspaper partner sites,  is that how Dan meant the quote?  My experience has been that Dan’s sentiment generally = vertical search (or, more accurately, Universal Search).   It’s about driving query volume for the core search property.  If that’s actually the case – and Yahoo is starting to focus on driving core search volume at the expense of their “local” verticals – how much will that hurt help their newspaper partners?

Ken Doctor and Terry Heaton have been providing good insight into the Yahoo – Newspaper consortium for some time now.

Cyber Monday

Techcrunch posted an article about the high hopes for a large Cyber Monday. Experts are expecting $700 million in online sales today.

According to wikipedia, the origins of Cyber Monday date back to 2005. The term was first coined by Shop.org when research showed that 77% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004. I personally have not heard of Cyber Monday until this month, but evidently the day is very popular for online shopping.

Cyber Monday represents the first chance for consumers to shop at work after the Thanksgiving holiday, and it presents a huge opportunity for retailers to use advertising to drive local media consumers to their online store fronts. Seventy two million Americans are expected to being shopping (purchasing or browsing) today. If that number is accurate, it would mean nearly 1 in 4 Americans will be online looking for Holiday presents on Cyber Monday.

About Internet Broadcasting

Internet Broadcasting (IB) builds local websites and applications for online consumers, advertisers and publishers. Our network totals more than 70 local media sites, primarily television station websites, with an aggregated audience of more than 16 million users per month.

IB’s network of websites includes leading broadcasters such as Hearst-Argyle Television, Post-Newsweek Stations, McGraw-Hill Broadcasting, NBC and Cox Television, and Meredith Broadcasting. A valuable partnership with legendary market leader CNN brings high quality traffic to the sites.

To learn about us, visit our website at www.ibsys.com.