• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, December 1, 2006

Aiming to compete with corporate pages on MySpace and YouTube, Yahoo is rolling out a series of sites dedicated to brands and products with devoted consumer bases.

These "brand universes" on Yahoo will allow fans to find product information and connect with each other within destinations that incorporate Yahoo's range of social media properties including photo-sharing site Flickr and Yahoo Answers.

Rather than being paid upfront by marketers, Yahoo is building the sites at its own expense in hopes of attracting relevant advertisers willing to pay premium CPM rates for association with brands favored by 13- to-34-year-olds. "The big win comes from other advertisers that will come to these environments over time," said Vince Broady, head of entertainment, games and youth at Yahoo.

The first of the 100 brand universe sites to be launched over the next year--for Nintendo's Wii gaming system--drew 250,000 visitors during the first 24 hours, according to Broady. He said Yahoo plans to unveil another six to dozen entertainment brand sites during the first half of 2007 before launching the balance by the end of next year. He declined to name any other brands around which sites would be created, but said that games, films, TV shows, and even celebrities were all likely properties.

Although not seeking marketers' cooperation in building the sites, Yahoo plans to cross-promote things like product launches and movie openings throughout its array of media properties to help further drive traffic to the brand portals. "We treat events that are important to these brands as events that are important to Yahoo," said Broady.

Because the brand universes are expected to draw very loyal, passionate consumers, Broady said they will be able to command higher CPMs than other social media properties on Yahoo. The sites will carry standard ad formats including display and video ads as well as ones that blend marketing messages with a site's content. "This gives us a lot of freedom to push the envelope with how we integrate advertising into these environments," said Broady.

In contrast to marketing profile pages on MySpace, Broady said he believes the brand universe sites will be more active because they benefit from the various social media properties Yahoo has acquired over the last year. The wii site, for instance, allows users to upload photos using Flickr and provide links using Del.icio.us. "It's easy to put up a page, it's another to keep it living and breathing," said Broady.