Regardless of how you feel about Tiger Woods and his extramarital affairs, it's difficult to deny that a celebrity scandal can be a traffic boon for an online publisher, and Yahoo is currently reaping the benefits.
Interest in Woods has already surpassed the public curiosity in Michael Jackson's death this summer, and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said the traffic coming in for Woods-related content has "made" Yahoo's quarter, Ad Age reports.
Whether or not Bartz was speaking facetiously remains to be seen, but it's true that traffic and impressions drive ad prices, and Yahoo has a lot of display inventory to sell. Bartz said that display prices are starting to go up and should continue to do so as the economy improves.
The web portal, which has lost some luster recently, isn't trying to compete with Google or Microsoft, but rather with TV as it tries to bring more dollars into online inventory, according to Bartz. "We host on our site 10 billion ad impressions a day," she said. "So you can buy a Super Bowl on our homepage every day -- that's the number of impressions that come through."
