Today marks a significant win for the Yahoo in terms of advertising deals and traditional media. Media General, a communications company with a market cap of around $250 million, announced that it will become the first member of the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium to sell Yahoo display ads at TV stations.
This move didn’t come out of the blue; it actually follows the completion of a pilot program in four markets. That makes it all the more important since success has been proven possible, though, and Media General will now be going "all in" by committing eight additional TV stations.
Curious what that means in terms of dollars and cents? A Media General statement gave a little background information, revealing, "Media General generated $7 million in Yahoo! revenues at its newspapers in 2009 . . . and the company estimates that amount will grow to approximately $10 million in 2010."
Then it got to the new part: "The sale of Yahoo! Display advertising by the company’s television stations is expected to increase Media General’s total Yahoo! Display revenues by approximately 50 percent on an annualized basis."
Yahoo no doubt hopes that these figures inspire other companies to follow suit.
A hat tip goes to Robin Wauters, in any event.