Brand Universe: Yahoo! to launch 100 separate Web sites on individual brands

Internet giant Yahoo! aims to benefit from user generated content as they plan to launch 100 Branded Entertainment Sites.

The company aims to boost ad revenues from these sites which would wrap all its content and social networking tools around a single entertainment brand.

Yahoo! is hoping that these branded portals would attract more advertisers to their services. They call this initiative Brand Universe.

Sean Atkins, head of programming and development for entertainment and games at Yahoo spoke on these plans: “What we haven’t done up until now is to aggregate all of the information and services into one location to have them more easily connect to each other in a social context.”

The company is struggling to compete against Google in the web advertising market and they are already due to launch their new ad platform called “Project Panama.”

Some test sites are already working including one for the Nintendo Wii gaming console. Some of the upcoming sites are to be based on Harry Potter as well as the video games Halo and The Sims. In addition, they are also planning branded portals on television shows Lost and The Office, and the Transformers toy line.