Yahoo’s Celeb News Page Omg! Dominates the Industry
In the realm of online celebrity gossip, Yahoo Inc.’s omg! website has commanded a dominant position in the market for more than a year, luring inquisitive minds from websites that may have more current, breaking news.
With a bare bones staff of just five full-time employees, the company has adopted a top secret but highly effective business model that Yahoo Media Group chief Jimmy Pitaro says has proven highly lucrative.
Drawing more hits than other, more up-to-the-minute celeb news sources like TMZ.com””which was the first online site to break the news of Michael Jackson’s death””Yahoo has shown that success in the field doesn’t necessarily hinge on having exclusive interviews or the freshest news.
Omg! stories are known for putting a slightly tongue-in-cheek, frivolous light on news that it typically extracts from other online media sources like Access Hollywood and Associated Press. The strategic addition of omg! links and blurbs from Yahoo’s main home page make it accessible to almost half a billion unique visitors per month.
In their most recent statistics, internet tracking company comScore reported some 20.6 million unique visitors to omg! for the month of May, more than the total combined number of hits for the second and third place TMZ and People.
The website says that most of the traffic comes from people who click on links to omg! on Yahoo’s home page. Despite the fact that most omg! readers view only about half the number of pages per visit compared to other celeb news sites, they still rank No.1 in overall page views in the category.
Omg’s! success has not gone unnoticed amongst its competitors. In February of this year, Microsoft Corp. and Hollywood production company BermanBraun launched the joint-venture Wonderwall that is attempting to mimic Yahoo’s success by attracting traffic through a larger portal.
“Our traffic has been beyond any estimates that any of us had projected,” said BermanBraun co-owner Lloyd Braun, who is also coincidentally the former head of the Yahoo Media Group.
In April, Wonderwall saw hits from some 9 million unique visitors, catapulting it past People magazine’s website and into third place just behind TMZ.
Though omg! is making efforts to increase its traffic “organically”, i.e., through search inquiries and user bookmarking, the Yahoo branch admits that they profit tremendously from their connections to internet giant’s main portal.
Omg! staffers contend that a large part of their success can also be attributed to the easy-breezy, non-judgmental style of their articles that focus less muckraking and digging dirt on celebrities and more on their personalities and public activities.
“We just like to tell the happy view on what’s going on in the entertainment world,” said Sibyl Goldman, an entertainment group vice president.
“It’s not all about traffic,” said Ed Gold, advertising director for All State Insurance, who has chosen to advertise heavily on the site due to its more positive, wholesome content. “Our goal is not to put State Farm into environments that aren’t appropriate to our brand. There are some [celebrity sites] that may go a little bit too far in what they cover.”
Mark Golin, editor for People.com, contends that while sites like omg! may get a lot of traffic, their reliance on Yahoo’s portal home page may turn out to be their Achilles’ heel in the long run. Although People.com also benefits from links on AOL’s home page, the majority of their hits come from people who have gone directly to the site.
“We have our own reporters. We create our own center of gravity,” said Golin. “Even should readers hear a piece of news somewhere else, they’ll still end up coming to us to make sure it’s true. You don’t necessarily get that with an aggregator.”
Harvey Levin of TMZ commented in a similar vein. “I think omg is great for what they do. It’s different from what we do. We break stories. ["¦] You shouldn’t be reliant on another place for getting all your traffic [...] It’s just better business."
In the heated struggle for market domination though, Pitaro says that other websites have no excuses.
“If you consider our competitors who have siblings that are TV broadcasters, they get tons of promotion on air,” he explained. “We’re differentiating ourselves by striking the right tone and aggregating the best content on the Web.”
As internet celebrity news becomes more profitable, it has also seen an influx of well-financed players. In addition to Wonderwall, News Corp.””owner of the pioneering social-networking site MySpace””also launched a entertainment news site called DailyFill in February.
Pitaro said that omg! does not intend to massively expand its budget or significantly alter its marketing strategy to attempt to ward off competitors. He says he isn’t too concerned about the new wave of competition.
“We love the idea that others are investing in the space, because together we’ll all be generating buzz and interest in this arena,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll all grow.”
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Image Courtesy Of Yahoo
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