There was much written in the sports pages (and in some cases the business pages) about Tiger Woods’ decision to miss the rest of the golf season and undergo reconstructive knee surgery.  

His absence is a big deal for sports fans – not to mention marketers and TV networks. After all, he is the biggest American sports machine since Michael Jordan.   

 ”Much like Michael Jordan did (Woods) has the power of drawing in the more casual viewer or participant to the sport,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Thomas Shaw told Reuters. “He has the ability of driving some participation. It gets people excited to get out and dust off the clubs and play some.”

This hasn’t been lost on advertisers. Woods ranked second on Forbes’ Celebrity 100 list, bringing in $115 million in 2007. He promotes General Motors’ Buick line of cars, Nike, Gillette and Accenture. He also began his first licensing venture this year with Gatorade Tiger, which media outlets reported as being worth at least $100 million.

Of course, nobody is about to abandon Tiger just because he’s taking the season off. But his layoff could alter some near term plans. General Motors is one company, for instance, that will have to change course, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Buick is being forced to drop one of its advertising efforts, which has been hyping a Buick promotion and contest. TV ads, print ads and a slew of Internet ads have been highlighting a “Tee-Off with Tiger” promotion that gives entrants a chance to win the opportunity to have Mr. Woods caddie for them while playing a round of golf in October.

The TV networks will also feel some pain from Tiger’s injury. He’s carried the sport with viewers for the past decade. As the New York Times put it:

Network executives and sponsors were not visibly panicking Wednesday that Tiger Woods would be gone from golf for the rest of the year as he recovered from reconstructive knee surgery. But their disappointment was palpable.

As the newspaper points out, the numbers make clear that Tiger has a bigtime impact on ratings. It says that in 88 tournaments over the last five years, Woods finished in the top five. During those, final round TV ratings hit an average of 4.4. In those events in which he did not finish in the top five, ratings averaged just 3.4 percent.

Keep an eye on:

• French financier Vincent Bollore said on Thursday that figures for his advertising company Havas were very good so far this year and added that Havas had not been impacted by the global credit crunch (Reuters)
• Google and Yahoo face intense U.S. Justice Department scrutiny of their deal to share some advertising revenue, and the heat will likely increase under a new administration (Reuters)
• Mario Puzo’s estate filed a $1-million lawsuit against Paramount Pictures for allegedly cheating “The Godfather” author’s heirs out of proceeds from a Corleone-inspired video game (LA Times)
• Billionaire investor Carl Icahn’s new blog, The Icahn Report, would go live Thursday afternoon (USA Today)

(Photo: Reuters)

This is not an entry about Microsoft. It is an entry about Yahoo’s wagon-load of new ad partnerships announced today and what we learned about the future of online advertising exchanges. Basically, Yahoo executives told us they are trying to build a more open, more social Internet strategy vis a vis consumers and advertisers.

On the consumer side, expect Yahoo to rewire its sites, email and instant messaging so that users can manage information about themselves and their friends in a single place. 
    
At a lunch with reporters after speaking at the Advertising 2.0 conference, Yahoo President Sue Decker said those changes would become apparent late this year and early next year.
    
For advertisers, some of the new partnerships announced on Wednesday include important tie-ins to Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange, where online ad space can be bought and sold more efficiently, based on the laws of supply and demand in force everywhere else.
 
The ideas are part of a bigger shift away from expecting viewers to come to a given site, toward extending your services out to wherever your users may be.
 
“It feels like the industry is ripe right now for contributing to a larger ecosystem,” Decker said.
 
Right Media’s Mike Walrath put it diplomatically, suggesting the days of publishers or other parties who try to control their own ad pricing in an open market could be numbered.
    
“If your business is based on inefficiency, and as the market becomes more efficient … some models will strengthen,” he said.

Media agency Havas Digital is participating in one of the new deals, agreeing to build a proprietary ad trading platform based on Yahoo’s technology. Havas Digital CEO Don Epperson told us in an interview that Havas had been working with Yahoo on this for nearly 9 months, and called Yahoo’s attitude refreshing.

There’s really a new attitude where they want to be open … I think it’s some publishers out there, they very much view their technology as proprietary and therefore not open. They also want to give most information to their own sales staff and not to the full general agency.
 
What Yahoo has made the jump to … is that the more information you give the advertiser (about the market value of prices) … we’re going to buy more where we know that we can get a good deal.

(Photo: Reuters)

Quarter after quarter, analysts and the financial press keep pressing advertising executives about the economy and spending. For good reason, too, since corporations often take scissors to advertising budgets during downturns.

Thing is, the chief executives of the big ad holding companies so far have given very much the same answer during conference calls and interviews: everyone is worried, nobody is cutting spending.

Interpublic CEO Michael Roth is no exception. Here’s what he said on Wednesday about the economy/spending issue during his company’s earnings call:

“Of course, it goes without saying clients remain cautious due to broader economic concerns. To date we are not seeing signs of a pullback. But we continue to monitor the situation closely so as to be able to response quickly should the need arise.”

Here’s Publicis Groupe’s Maurice Levy:

“Not one single client has changed its plans. We continue to work with our clients according to plans.”

And Omnicom’s John Wren:

“Like most of our clients, we remain cautious about the economy, but to date, as I said, we have not seen any significant reduction in client spending.”

Havas’s Herve Philippe had this to say:

“Today we do not see any impact on our numbers from the international environment.”

So everyone seems to agree that nothing is happening — yet.

What’s that mean? It could be the industry is painting the brightest picture possible, which isn’t unheard of in advertising. Or it could mean companies aren’t yet feeling the full effects of the slowdown, and don’t need to take scissors to ad budgets. Or perhaps the thinking in the corporate world has shifted, and executives believe marketing is too important to cut. Or maybe the big cuts are just working their way through the system and will show up next quarter.

Give us your best guess. We’re interested.

(Photo: Reuters)