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Lycos to woo advertisers with new look

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CIOL Bureau
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Reshma Kapadia

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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