Like sports, rivalries are always a nice thing in business, especially if you’re the seller.  Some of the interesting rivalries of late: 

Viacom vs. News Corp.: IGN, MySpace 

Yahoo! vs. Google: YouTube

Google vs. MSFT: aQuantive, Doubleclick

But what about CondeNast vs. Hearst?  Both have fantastic brands but their business is being challenged by the digital revolution.  Last year Conde Nast bought Reddit, this year Hearst’s Kenneth Bronfin led the charge to acquire UGO and Kaboodle.

Will Conde Nast counter?  Or will Hearst build momentum and pull away?  Don’t know, but it’s a fascinating time to be a new media company.

Conde Nast is a unit of Advance Publications.  Conde Nast made $1.4B in 2006 revenues and Advance generated $7.3B, Hearst made a not-too-shabby $4.55B.

Just yesterday, private equity firm VSS came out with the most bullish web advertising report ever, suggesting that web ads will be larger than newspapers and TV by 2011.  I had run some numbers and I had estimated that that milestone would come in 2021.  Regardless, after years of sitting on the sidelines fearful, paranoid or in denial, old media wants to shed its old media moniker and avoid Yahoo!, Google, MSFT from further consolidating web revenues, which were $17B in 2006 but could be as high as $60B.

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