Yahoo Gives Katie Couric $4 Million Raise to Do What She's Always Done
LatestRoughly a year and a half ago, Yahoo dot com hired Katie Couric to do some stuff for them. Since then, Couric has landed some high-profile interviews, which has apparently warranted her a pay bump from $6 million a year to $10 million a year, despite the lack of originality in her content or an indication that a lot of people are eagerly consuming it.
Recode reported the salary bump on Friday, and though Yahoo confirmed Couric would be staying on, they unsurprisingly wouldn’t comment on her salary.
But as the Wall Street Journal reported in April, Couric’s worth at Yahoo is debatable.
All told, Ms. Couric has generated about 118 million views at Yahoo since coming on full-time in June, growing each quarter. If each of these were attached to a video ad sold at the market rate for premium online video of between $15 to $25 per one-thousand views, according to media buyers, then those views have generated revenue equal to about half her salary. That doesn’t count additional revenue from major sponsorships and a Snapchat deal.
Kathy Savitt, Yahoo’s chief marketing officer, who also oversees Yahoo’s content, disputes such back-of-the-envelope math. “We believe Katie’s tenure at Yahoo has been accretive to our business, accretive to our users, and accretive to the overall Yahoo brand,” she said.
Ms. Couric has shown some advertiser-wooing power, having brought in new advertisers like Merrill Edge financial services, which sponsored her “Now I Get It” explainer segment, and helps Yahoo sell ads beyond her own work.
“They are using her as a tent pole, and then packaging other media around it,” said Adam Kasper, chief media officer of ad agency Havas Media.
The article goes on to note that, “For her interview subjects who aren’t happy with just appearing on the Web, Yahoo and ABC have a deal that allows some of Ms. Couric’s interviews to air on ABC News shows.” Sharing video interviews is a common practice among news organizations, but it hardly speaks to the strength of Yahoo’s platform, or the freshness of Couric’s work there.