Microsoft and News Corp. have offered many reasons behind their desires to team up with Yahoo — its brand name, its popularity, content pages, search engine and e-mail service.
But Yahoo has another asset that makes them salivate: a massive trove of data about where people surf on the Web and what they do there.
Every month, about 136 million people visit Yahoo sites, and Yahoo collects at least 110 billion pieces of data about them, from the topics they search to the videos they watch, according to an analysis that comScore conducted for The New York Times. The information is used to deliver relevant advertisements to people based on their interests, and Yahoo collects more of it than any other company, comScore says.
Microsoft’s chief advertising strategist, Michael Galgon, said during an interview that data was indeed a factor behind the bid for Yahoo. Advertisers only need to know a limited number of details about consumers to serve them relevant ads, he said, but Web publishers like Microsoft see no limit to the amount of data that could prove lucrative.
The more that Web companies know about each visitor, he said, the more they can attract advertisers and charge higher rates.
“What is targeting in the long term?” Galgon said. “It looks like increasing incidents of moments where advertising equals information. You’re getting content about things and messaging about things that are spot on to who you are.”
For Microsoft, buying Yahoo would increase the number of times it could collect data on a typical consumer by 674 percent, to 2,747 times a month from 355, comScore found. Given Microsoft’s ambitions to compete with Google in online advertising, that increase goes far in justifying its $44 billion bid.
Meanwhile, News Corp. is in talks with Yahoo to merge some of its Web assets, like MySpace,…