Yahoo’s content strategy turns to laughter

Enda Kenny’s ribbon-cutting at Yahoo’s new offices in the Dublin docklands yesterday will add three floors and more than 7,200sq m to Yahoo’s operations here. Needless to say the premises have been described as “state of the art”.

But what is the state of the "art" at Yahoo? Under chief executive Marissa Mayer the tech giant has pursued a strategy of boosting advertising dollars by doing that thing tech companies have traditionally been reluctant to do: make content.

As part of Mayer's much- vaunted push into video, Yahoo hired Katie Couric in late 2013 as "global news anchor" for a reported $5 million annual salary. It now says her live and on-demand interviews have generated more than 65 million video views to date, with an average of more than a million live streams per episode in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Comedy half-hours are Yahoo's latest wheeze. Last week saw its resurrection of the axed NBC cult show Community, with the first two episodes of its sixth season debuting on Yahoo Screen and new episodes added every Tuesday.

Anyone for basketball- themed laughs? Sin City Saints is another entry in the company's nascent Yahoo Originals brand, while next month will see the landing of Other Space, an eight-part space comedy created by Paul Feig, the writer- director set to helm a female- led Ghostbusters.

Who else is Yahoo going to call?