Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc. has built its reputation on breaking new ground, but the company's latest Web initiative has a distinct retro feel to it.
Yesterday, Yahoo lifted the veil on Shine, its new Internet portal designed for women, replete with pages dedicated to fashion, sex, parenting and celebrity gossip. The company says it is responding to pressure from its advertisers to provide better access to the coveted female demographic who now wield the purchasing power in many households.
The ability to deliver narrow but highly focused niche audiences to online marketers has powered the dramatic rising values of many Internet companies.
While Shine appears to buck this trend by targeting half of all Web users as its chosen demographic, it speaks to advertisers' continuing appetite to reach a mass audience the way they can with magazines such as Chatelaine, Redbook and Cosmopolitan.
Although the Web has enabled sites to offer content an inch wide and a mile deep, Shine could feel a mile wide and an inch deep to some users, said Sarah Rotman Epps, an eBusiness analyst with Forrester Research.
“It feels a little like 1999 to me,” she said. “Whereas Yahoo is pursuing this portal strategy to target a specific demographic, the trend now is to go very deep and specific on content portals with narrow sites that have a real expertise.”
Analysts agree that women interested in celebrity gossip are more likely to visit TMZ.com just as those who enjoy reading about home decor probably visit apartmenttherapy.com.
Like the other Yahoo properties, Shine will employ an editorial team that will produce some of its content, but most of the articles will be generated by third-party sites.
But according to Ms. Rotman Epps' research, 39 per cent of all female U.S. Web users already aggregate their own content-using tools such as really simple syndication (RSS) feeds to gather the blog posts and news items they want to read on a daily basis.
Other female-focused sites such as iVillage.com, which was bought by NBC Universal for $600-million (U.S.) in 2006, have seen their unique monthly visitors plateau and then decline. According to data from Internet tracking firm compete.com, iVillage saw its unique visitors in February drop by 37 per cent over the same period last year.
Jason DeZwirek, chief executive officer of Kaboose.com, a company that owns a series of websites aimed specifically at mothers, said Shine and other broad-based sites designed for women could struggle to target a so-called “niche” audience that encompasses half the population. “I would doubt that they would drill down very far in any one of the categories within the niche,” he said. “Why the niches are doing better, or taking share, is because the advertisers can have a much more contextual experience with your advertising.”
For example, an advertiser looking to market a minivan doesn't want that ad placed in front of single women who live in condos, he said.
Still, 40 million women visit Yahoo sites every day, according to a company statement, and some analysts believe the success of websites run by traditional women's magazines points to a desire for sites such as Shine that cater to women seeking a broad range of topics.
“There are magazines like this all over the place,” said Yankee Group senior analyst Daniel Taylor. “It was only a matter of time before you saw properties like this emerge. The whole idea here is that the ‘blocking and tackling' of this industry is in building audiences around strong editorial, branded user experiences and selling advertising around it.”
Yahoo senior vice-president Scott Moore said Shine represents an important addition to the company's stable of content sites, which includes Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports.
“We're executing on Yahoo's starting point strategy by ensuring that women who start their day with Yahoo are offered a more relevant experience,” he said. Yahoo said Shine will be “especially attractive” to advertisers in the retail, packaged goods and pharmaceutical industries.
