David Warlock of Outsell interviewed Peggy White, General Manager of Yahoo! Finance reflected on the bullish ComScore ratings for Yahoo! Finance, which after 11 years of operations has by far the most engaged audiences in consumer financial partners - valuable assets for their advertisers, to be sure. "We wear lots of hats at Yahoo," Peggy notes, which comes in handy with Yahoo! Finance's diverse users. Yahoo's new Personal Finance is an example of how Yahoo needs to keep growing, servicing specific segments more efficiently, though lines are blurring. Licensing content is key to Yahoo! Finance growth, with original news reporting and video from Yahoo playing a role along with user-generated content from Yahoo properties. David: how do partners feel about Yahoo's content? Peggy: it was a bit of a stir in the beginning, but a year later people see that Yahoo is creating more valuable locations around which partner content can congregate, providing efficient marriages.

David: are you a "frenemy" of other content providers? If so, which part of you smiles? Peggy: we have very different relationships with our content partners, scale is important to them, so providers appreciate the other side of the coin - Yahoo sends them traffic that they can monetize. Partners are actually very dependent on Yahoo, therefore, as well as Yahoo being dependent on them. David: will the day come that this will break down? Peggy: there will always be some natural tension, but for now there are extremely positive relationships. In some instances they deliver 30 to 50 percent of partners' traffic. David: are partners worried about dilution? Peggy (with some frustration): no, not really. [COMMENT: David, this is how it works today, it's better than paying for contextual ads in many ways to partner with Yahoo, they're not trying to dilute brand but strengthen it to an audience lost in agnostic content.]

User-generated content: aggregates around message boards, largest message boards, continuing to innovate, will see a lot more, Yahoo! Answers added to Personal Finance channel (see our earlier post on this). Yahoo! Answers has been a great success, excited about the possibilities, developing expert centers, may see experts emerging from the community. David: might there be groups of users who become sources of expertise? Peggy: absolutely. David: Where is the competition coming from? Peggy: We concentrate on the customer, listen to them carefully, try to stay in front of the curve, expect to continue to have competition, as long as we innovate and keep on listening we should be fine. Competition comes from any number of directions, especially as financial companies themselves become more aggressive in trying to lure audiences who may execute trades through them. Yahoo does lots and lots of research with customers, Peggy emphasized several times.

David: how does Web 2.0 changing the Web change things? "Not the same old same old that we were doing even two years ago," Peggy notes, new streaming technology helps users to engage audiences more effectively. Streaming quotes, new charting technology, changing the paradigm, engagement metrics are going up. Is there a movement towards changing the ways that users change talking to one another. How is the space used to "broker" between users on content? Peggy: a lot of interaction in our online communities, but users always want to be steered a little bit to understand where the action is at. "Buzz index" is used in Yahoo! Finance, content that's identified in the user community can be highlighted on the front page.

David: Multimedia? Part of the picture, we evolve with our clients, we need to be agnostic as to how they want to get it. Traditional media companies need to deliver in multiple forms as well and be more agnostic to be a part of this winning strategy. Have to constantly evolve to serve the industry. David: do we give too much, is that a danger? Peggy, absolutely, there's a highly engaged audience. Question: Real-time and role in providing increasingly sophisticated services?Peggy: A factor, lots of people talking to NYSE, we're an ad-based services, but when you start breaking down into more discrete audiences subscription models are there. [COMMENT: No commitment to anything other than advertising here is the party line, but getting the most of increasingly sophisticated financial analysis tools begs the question of how to ignore the professional audience]. Video partners will be added, it's a numbers crowd but video is hot (always was in trading rooms).

David: advertising, as you slice smaller and smaller with video streams, how do you manage this inventory that you're creating, is this a perceived problem as advertising is growing? Peggy: ads continue to grow, video ads are a big part of this, as more advertisers move to the Web this is a part of the mix. Video works very well with brand messaging and can move it into direct response marketing, will continue to evolve and learn. Want to deliver good experiences for advertisers also.

Peggy: With innovation and ideas in Yahoo, very confident that Yahoo Finance will continue to grow.

Yahoo takes a lot of lumps these days for its earnings, but in terms of positioning it's safe to say that Yahoo is investing in becoming the kind of mainstream media company that most traditional media companies can never hope to become. Yahoo listens intently to customers and market demand and provides highly effective solutions for marketing content and ad inventory. It may be all things to very broad audiences at times, but by slicing finer and finer while building online communities and content Yahoo is preparing itself to be in the catbird seat as 2007's reality checks unfold.