Viacom sleeps with Google’s rival
by Minic Rivera
April 11, 2007
Yahoo Inc. entered into a multi-year partnership with media conglomerate and Google’s tormentor Viacom Inc. to provide exclusive sponsored search and contextual ads to all high-profile web sites owned by Viacom.
Under the deal, Yahoo will cover Viacom’s 33 broadband sites, including MTV.com, VH1.com, Nickelodeon.com, comedycentral.com and BET.com. The deal can potentially expand to more than 140 additional Viacom web sites worldwide.
The deal shuts Google in Viacom’s radar and is seen as Yahoo’s latest effort to stay ahead of its arch-rival in online-search competition.
Viacom is really embracing the web these days, and I feel like nobody is really putting the pieces together. This deal with Yahoo, the Joost deal, the complete overhaul of MTV Online’s strategy (which Shelly Palmer wrote about) — and, of course, the YouTube lawsuit.
As far as I can tell, there is no other company moving this agressively onto the net. And still, every report on Viacom seems to take jabs at them, for the lawsuit.
This company is waking up! Let’s give them a fair shake.
Kimberly