It's always an interesting week in media and entertainment. This week, we've seen a 15% drop in a media giant's stock, had a revelation that advertising can in fact be mixed with Web 2.0 content, and gotten some interesting signs from up above. Here's the rundown:
An advertising revelation
Shares of Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) plummeted earlier this week when the company announced slower-than-expected advertising revenue. As Alyce Lomax pointed out, this was due to weak sales to automotive and financial services companies. Now, come on, was this really that unexpected? The economy is in a slump, the auto industry has been suffering for eons, and people are surprised by this? This is a perfect example of inefficient markets -- apparently, none of the geniuses on Wall Street had priced in slower ad sales as a result of a slower economy. Or at least that's what they expect us to believe.
Oh, well, I say that makes for one heck of a buying opportunity. Yahoo!'s been doing a lot of things right -- ramping up different content ideas, an entrenched user base, and a diversified group of business sectors (as well as its possible bid for another Web 2.0 phenomenon, Facebook, which could have interesting implications with the Y! Music service, as well as its other youth-targeted services). So the large price drop may well make for a good value play at this point.
Make money when you spend money
Psst. Let me tell you a secret. Apparently, there are ways for companies to make money off of other people's content! What a concept! But to be truthful, this has been a conceptual idea for so long that to see it put into practice is refreshing. MySpace is now selling digital downloads from independent artists, YouTube's rival Revver.com has made money off YouTube'sbiggest name, and AOL might finally realize that user-generated content could make money.
The MySpace concept is novel and should help News Corp. (NYSE:NWS) monetize this high-traffic site. But the YouTube and AOL missteps are frustrating to see. YouTube is pouring money into its videos (reported by Forbes to be close to $1 million a month in bandwidth costs), and it never thought to market these franchises the way Revver.com has? As for AOL, it's about time the company started talking about the new Web revolution, although I might doubt how much they even understand about Web 2.0 (just read this article and you'll see what I mean). I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but we've been looking for Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) to find some way to make money off of the albatross that has been AOL for a while now.
A nimble giant
As for News Corp, who ever thought that a stagnant media behemoth would turn out to be so nimble on its feet? The company scored a huge win with MySpace and is doing well at finding money-making ideas for it. It's also moving into new media arenas, and . it's listening to the Almighty? The company is capitalizing on the trends that have people looking for faith-related media outlets (evidenced by Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, Newmarket studio's The Passion of the Christ movie, and many others).
By itself, this will likely not be a huge addition to the bottom line of such a large company, but it does prove that News Corp. is right in the forefront of the media race. It's finding niches in unsupplied content areas, and it's doing well at making use of such a large base of businesses. I've had my eye on News Corp. for a while, and I'm glad to see the bears of last year being proved wrong.
Maybe heaven has listened to our investing prayers...
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Fool media and entertainment editor Shruti Basavaraj owns no shares of any company mentioned above. The Fool has a full disclosure policy.
