Could Yahoo acquisition develop US readership for Daily Mail?

Are you a user of Yahoo? I used to be, but it’s been a hell of a long time. Yahoo was the first website I ever visited. It introduced me to email, instant messaging and even website design and hosting (hands up if you remember Geocities?) but for me (perhaps more than a decade ago), it fell out of favour to, let’s face it, better services like Google, Facebook, and WordPress.

In the UK and Europe, many web users would consider the former online giant as something of a spent force. So the news that The Daily Mail is interested in buying Yahoo might come as a surprise to many media pundits.

So what exactly does The Daily Mail see in Yahoo?

Well, you might be surprised to learn that Yahoo still carries considerable clout in the US.

According to Comscore, Yahoo is the third most visited online platform in the US, attracting more than 204 million visitors in February. This puts Yahoo only 1% behind Facebook in terms of users.

A University of Oxford study also claims that one in four Americans view Yahoo’s news and sports pages every week. Add online properties under Yahoo stewardship, like the blogging platform Tumblr and the photo sharing service Flickr, and it’s easy to see how the company can claim more than one billion regular users.

The one thing that Yahoo aren’t very good at is monetising its content (especially when compared to Google and Facebook).

The Daily Mail is already pretty successful in the US, attracting some 51 million users each month and featuring in the top 10 online news sources. While the US represents a huge growth opportunity for The Daily Mail’s digital output, like Yahoo it has struggled to monetise its content.

Could the combined strength of The Daily Mail and Yahoo be enough to change the fortunes of both organisations? The sheer volume of advertising inventory available in a “brand-safe” environment would certainly draw the attention of media buyers but is scale the only barrier to success in the US?

Big might be better in the United States but today’s most successful online publishers will also tell you that more subtle activities like clear analytics and laser-focused targeting will ultimately win the day. The question is can big brash brands like The Daily Mail and Yahoo learn the art of subtlety?