Categories: OLD Media Moves

CNET, a takeover target, hurt by blogs

Kevin Delaney of The Wall Street Journal writes Tuesday about how tech news company CNET has seen its business suffer because of the rise of blogs that now offer much of the same information and commentary.

Delaney wrote, “Founded in 1992, CNET operates a string of Web sites focused primarily on technology and entertainment, such as News.com, Game-Spot, TV.com and ZDNet. Those sites are staffed by editors and reporters and attract blue-chip tech advertising. CNET, along with the likes of Yahoo and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, was for a while one of the few places on the Web that an advertiser could reach a significant number of consumers.

“But the rise of blogs and online-ad networks has altered the landscape for such premium Web-publishing efforts. As tech blogs proliferated, CNET’s News.com and ZDNet tech sites lost 27% and 4%, respectively, of their U.S. readers over the past year, according to comScore Inc. Online-ad networks allow advertisers to reach large numbers of consumers spread across many different sites. Such networks — including ones now owned by Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft Corp. — offer a single place to buy ad spots on many other sites. The ad networks often cut deals to fill ad slots that Web publishers’ own sales forces haven’t sold. Some advertisers see them as a one-stop way to have their ads displayed to a large number of consumers at a lower cost than traditional Web-site ad purchases.

“Both CNET’s management and the dissident investors agree that CNET needs to adjust to the changed Web landscape — and both believe the company can get back on track with the right turnaround strategy. Their prescriptions in general involve bringing more users to its sites and increasing the amount of ad revenue it generates for each visitor.”

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REBlogGirl says:
March 5, 2008 at 8:07 pm
CNet... good grief, I haven't been there in so long. Kind of went the way of HotBot- very late 90s. They need to readjust their business model and open content creation up to subscribers... If they intend to generate income from content through advertising, it's the only logical way to do it. Plus it adds the interactivity the rest of the 2.0 web does.