VICE & Yahoo: Winner & Loser Of Media Space In 2014

The media space has gone a dramatic transformation in 2014.

Tapp TV Founder and CEO, Jon Klein, was recently on Bloomberg to discuss the winners and losers of the media space.

Winner: VICE

"VICE has so cleverly positioned itself as the source of millennial news. That’s their brand and Shane Smith embodies it himself personally.They raised half a billion dollars in new investment - that’s a lot of cash to have to further hone your position together and further and grab market share," Klein said.

He continued, "He is branding himself as counter, right, and that’s very appealing to viewers, readers, users, whatever you want to call them and everything about their brand kind of lines up behind that and so we’ll see how he puts that money to use, but $2.5 billion valuation on that company. He has also said he wants to go public. I don’t know this year or when, but he has got a lot of momentum behind him."

Loser: Yahoo! Inc. YHOO

"They are not personal losers; they are not losers as people," Klein said. "They just had tough year. Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, the sale of, the IPO of Alibaba has kind of revealed the underlying matrix behind the core Yahoo business and it’s a tough story. Their display advertising has been really challenged, it’s been faltering. Mobile has picked up for them, which is good. So, she has got a huge challenge ahead of her to catch up to the giants in Internet advertising – Google and Facebook."