From the folks at MarketingVOX:

“In the coming months, Yahoo will begin rolling out the first set of what it calls ‘brand universes’ – dedicated areas on Yahoo for fans of a movie or product to congregate, share and connect with each other, reports Adweek. Unlike the brand areas on MySpace and YouTube, Yahoo is not asking marketers for ad dollars to build the sites. Instead, it itself has identified a batch of 100 ‘passion brands’ to build dedicated areas for.”

I think this could be smart if done well. This is probably obvious to most, but I bet that when calculating what constitutes a “passion brand” Yahoo looked at:

• # of search queries in that area
• size of advertising ecosystem on those keywords (minus the ad dollars from the company that owns the brand itself – though they will likely advertise as well)
• margin on advertisements in that area

Furthermore, I’m sure that when they looked at the numbers relative to the cost of them aggregating relevant content from across their network this was an absolute no brainer. (They’re doing it for “free” :) )If they stick to it, I bet these could do well. The real question is, how much will Yahoo invest in original content to make sure that these sites become true destinations and aren’t just doing well because of search referrals. I’ll be curious if they feel like anything more than portals. So far the example up at wii.yahoo.com does not. It’s simple aggregation (actually super simple – looking for the Wii tag across del.icio.us and Flickr) across Yahoo’s assets. (I wonder if I tagged 1000 pictures of PS3s on flickr with the tag “Wii” if I could get the images to show up in their Wii Flickr module.)

Yahoo may wait to invest beyond simple aggregation in these miniportals to see if they are actually providing increased revenue or just cannibalizing ad revenue from other areas of their network. (I assume they’ll be offering placement here as part of a package deal.) Of course, without unique value on the sites why would customers or advertisers want to spend more time/money there? There aren’t any ads on the Wii site yet but there’s a big blank space on the right that looks like the perfect spot.

This issue of pure repackaging vs. providing unique value is important. A lot of these repackaging arrangements could be more valuable if they provided some unique pull. Unfortunately, many companies are just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. We’ll see which path Yahoo takes. And the truth is, if Yahoo can make good money through aggregation alone, they likely will.