That involves a leap of faith on the part of the website to send valuable traffic away from its site. Denton backs up his beliefs by pointing out that the combined market capitalisation of the Internet portals, aggregators and search engines is at least 100 times that of the content originators. Dan Thompson, chief executive of 365 Corporation, sees syndication as a small but growing revenue stream for his Internet and premium service phone group. Yesterday the UK company signed a deal to provide football content for Excite, the Internet portal, for the Euro 2000 tournament. The demand for content is growing and the people who can supply that are going to be in a nice position.
Incremental costs are so low.
Once you have got the asset you might as well make money out of it. The only caveat to the use of syndicators, according to Forrester Research, is that some content companies approach syndication with caution for fear of diluting their brand or becoming a commodity. Research by Forrester in the US shows that a typical media firm will have 69 Internet syndication deals by 2003, compared with just 14 now. There is no doubt, says Carsten Schmidt, an analyst with Forrester, that syndication will be embraced as loss-making Internet companies seek revenue streams beyond advertising.