Reshma Kapadia
NEW YORK: Terra Lycos unveiled a new look and feel to its Lycos network on
Monday, unifying its various Web sites such as Matchmaker.com and Raging Bull in
an attempt to better address the needs of advertisers at a time spending is on
the decline.
The move comes about a year after Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica
SA's Terra Networks bought US search engine firm Lycos and at a time media
companies are struggling to woo the increasingly sparse advertising dollars due
to a backdrop of economic uncertainty.
"It's really one of the big consumer-facing statements and
advertiser-facing statements Terra Lycos has made as a combined entity,"
Rich Gotham, vice president of sales at Terra Lyocs in the United States, said
in a phone interview.
While there has been integration on the technology end between Terra and
Lycos since the merger, Gotham said this is the first example of them coming
together in a way that consumers can see.
Stephen Killeen, the head of Terra Lycos' US operations, said in an interview
the company had to do a better job of letting its users, who might come
regularly to one of its niche sites such as Quotes.com and Angelfire, know what
other properties belong to the Internet media company.
The new Lycos network will have a magazine feel, rather than its traditional
directory or table of contents format, in an effort to combine Terra's
"playful entertainment" brand with Lycos' "get online and find
what you want" aim, Gotham said.
It also hopes to appeal to specific audiences such as teens, families and
singles with its different categories of properties such as Matchmaker.com so
that Terra Lycos can offer advertisers more targeted audiences for their
messages.
"It's fair to say we are focusing on going deeper in certain areas
and" doing less in others. "We don't try to be everything for
everyone, but we still have an audience of 30 million-plus a month that comes
through our turnstiles," Gotham said. "But in terms of merchandising
our site, we are trying to deliver that audience and put it in meaningful
buckets for advertisers."
A common search structure will be woven through all of the areas within Terra
Lycos, including Gamesville, Raging Bull and Lycos Entertainment.
Although content from Terra will be present on the Lycos network, users of
Lycos and Terra will be greeted with different presentations to better address
the needs of the Web surfers in the United States and those in Spain, Latin
America and South America, Killeen said.
Lycos' new look features fewer ads on each page and gives advertisers more
flexibility in the size, shape and placement of their ads to make the sites more
appealing to them. Gotham said the new look would increase the usage and the
reach of Lycos Network.
"A year ago, we sold CPMs" or cost per thousand impressions,
Killeen said. "Today, we sell results." This is a sentiment that has
pervaded the Internet media community for much of this year as companies
second-guessed the effectiveness of advertising on the Web, especially as they
look to cut costs to contend with economic uncertainty.
Internet media giants like AOL Time Warner Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. have
restructured their ad groups to better strike marketing pacts with big companies
and improve relations with advertisers.
"I think our strategy on some level is borne of this current
climate," Gotham said. "It's incumbent upon us to demonstrate to
advertisers that we reach an audience that is very valuable and we can deliver a
tactful message in different forms."
Killeen said Terra Lycos would offer its outlook on the ad market later in
the week, when it reports its results. But Gotham said he had seen a bounce
back. However, he said it was difficult to determine whether it was due to
seasonality or something else.
The Sept. 11 attacks on the United States "did have an effect of causing
people to stop in their tracks a little bit and the scale has balanced on that.
There are a number (of advertisers) who have stopped and a number who look at
this as an opportunity and those that say, it's the holiday season, we have to
advertise," Gotham said.
(C) Reuters Limited.