By Frank Barnako, Frank Barnako
Last Update: 2:24 PM ET Sep 13, 2006
YouTube, Bankrate.com (RATE), eHarmony and Gawker are on a list of candidates for buyouts, according to an investment banker's presentation Wednesday morning to the Online Publishers Association.
Tolman Geffs, managing director of , said that the number of deals for online consumer-media companies has nearly doubled in the last three months. There have been 91 in the last nine months compared with 47 in the three previous quarters.
"The biggest problem is acquiring new users," Geffs said. He pointed out that year-over-year audience growth among 10 major online publishers has been only 6.4%. "There was a time when that was the monthly growth rate."
The urgency for a larger audience is the fact, research by Outsell says, that an online customer is worth only
said that 42% of the recent deals have been completed by existing media players. Examples include the purchases by the New York Times Co. (NYT) of About.com, Reader's Digest Association Inc. (RDA) buyout of , and Viacom Inc.'s (VIA) acquisition of Atom Entertainment as strategies to reach more people, online, quickly. The banker's firm managed at least nine deals over the summer.
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Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) will be charter advertisers on NBC's new joint venture with affiliates to stream video programming on their Web sites. The broadcaster said that two dozen other media producers, including CNet Networks Inc. (CNET) and Forbes.com will also make their content available for syndication.
Web sites can either share in revenue from preroll ads NBC will insert, or they can pay fees for showing the content and selling their own ads. There was no announcement of when the new venture will begin operations.
Fred Wilson, a VC in New York, calls the NBC move a big deal. "Video is being watched on the Web and it's going to move to the living room," . Wilson suggests program producers might be happy with getting a slice of ad revenue from NBC sites, but imagine how much happier they'd be if YouTube had the content, too, as they'll be able to. That could mean huge advertising revenues.
The New York Times has about NBC this morning, too. Quoting Randy Falco, NBC Universal Television Group (GE) president: "If we really want to compete with big aggregators like Yahoo and Google, we need our video in as many places as possible."
Also, NBC and Warner Bros. Television Group (TWX) announced a partnership for streaming and video sales of WB's "Studio 60 on Sunset Strip" series, which debuts on the TV network next Monday. NBC gets streaming and on-demand cable and satellite rights; WB gets to sell "permanent downloads of episodes" after they are broadcast.
Meanwhile, reports: "Peacock staffers are sweating bullets over the impending release of what the company is calling TV 2.0, a proposed top-to-bottom reorganization of the network to streamline it for the Internet age." An NBC staffer is quoted saying "everyone is waiting for the ax to fall."
Disclaimer: I own shares in Time Warner and P&G.
Podshow Inc., the San Francisco-based podcasting business backed by Kleiner Perkins venture capital, announced expansion to London this morning through a partnership with BT Group Plc (BT). Podshow was founded by Adam Curry, who lives near London.
"BT Podshow is launching a nationwide call for aspiring film producers, musicians, presenters and DJs from across the U.K. to submit audio and video content," according to a news release. The venture's Web site is